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Library of Congress 
v Washington D. C« 




Class. 
Book _ 



PRESENTED BY 



UNITY OF GOOD 

RUDIMENTAL DIVINE 
SCIENCE 

NO AND YES 

RETROSPECTION AND 
INTROSPECTION 



4 J 



UNITY OF GOOD 



UNITY OF GOOD 



BY 



MARY BAKER EDDY 

AUTHOR OF SCIENCE AND HEALTH WITH KEY TO 
THE SCRIPTURES 



BOSTON, U.S.A. 
Published by Allison V. Stewart 

for the trustees under the will of mary baker g. eddy 

Falmouth and St. Paul Streets 

1917 



Authorized Literature of 

The First Church of Christ, Scientist s 

in Boston, Massachusetts 



11 



Copyright, 1887, i8qi, iqo8 
By Mary Baker G. Eddy 



All rights reserved 



CONTENTS 

Page 

Caution in the Truth i 

Does God know or behold sin, sickness, and death ? I 

Seedtime and Harvest 8 

Is anything real of which the physical senses are 

cognizant? 8 

The Deep Things of God 13 

Ways Higher than Our Ways 17 

Rectifications 20 

A Colloquy 21 

The Ego 27 

Soul 28 

There is no Matter 31 

s ji bt 33 

Touch 34. 



Taste 



35 



Force 35 

Is There no Death? 37 

Personal Statements 44 



vi CONTENTS 

Page 

Credo 48 

Do you believe in God? 48 

Do you believe in man ? 49 

Do you believe in matter ? 50 

What say you of woman ? 51 

What say you of evil ? 52 

Suffering from Others' Thoughts .... 55 

The Saviour's Mission 59 

Summary • • . . 64 



UNITY OF GOOD 



CAUTION IN THE TRUTH 

"J3ERHAPS no doctrine of Christian Science rouses so 
^ much natural doubt and questioning as this, that 
God knows no such thing as sin. Indeed, this may be set 
down as one of the "things hard to be understood/' such 
as the apostle Peter declared were taught by his fellow- 
apostle Paul, "which they that are unlearned and unstable 
wrest . . . unto their own destruction." (2 Peter hi. 16.) 
Let us then reason together on this important subject, 
whose statement in Christian Science may justly be char- 
acterized as wonderful. 

Does God know or behold sin, sickness, and death f 

The nature and character of God is so little appre- 
hended and demonstrated by mortals, that I counsel my 
students to defer this infinite inquiry, in their discussions 
of Christian Science. In fact, they had better leave the 
subject untouched, until they draw nearer to the divine 
character, and are practically able to testify, by their lives, 
that as they come closer to the true understanding of God 
they lose all sense of error. 

1 



2 UNITY OF GOOD 

The Scriptures declare that God is too pure to behold 
iniquity (Habakkuk i. 13); but they also declare that 
God pitieth them who fear Him; that there is no place 
where His voice is not heard; that He is "a very present 
help in trouble." 

The sinner has no refuge from sin, except in God, who 
is his salvation. We must, however, realize God's pres- 
ence, power, and love, in order to be saved from sin. This 
realization takes away man's fondness for sin and his 
pleasure in it; and, lastly, it removes the pain which 
accrues to him from it. Then follows this, as the finale in 
Science: The sinner loses his sense of sin, and gains a 
higher sense of God, in whom there is no sin. 

The true man, really saved, is ready to testify of God 
in the infinite penetration of Truth, and can affirm that 
the Mind which is good, or God, has no knowledge of sin. 

In the same manner the sick lose their sense of sickness, 
and gain that spiritual sense of harmony which contains 
neither discord nor disease. 

According to this same rule, in divine Science, the 
dying — if they die in the Lord — awake from a sense of 
death to a sense of Life in Christ, with a knowledge of 
Truth and Love beyond what they possessed before; be- 
cause their lives have grown so far toward the stature of 
manhood in Christ Jesus, that they are ready for a spirit- 
ual transfiguration, through their affections and under- 
standing. 

Those who reach this transition, called death, without 



CAUTION IN THE TRUTH 3 

having rightly improved the lessons of this primary school 
of mortal existence, — and still believe in matter's reality, 
pleasure, and pain, — are not ready to understand im- 
mortality. Hence they awake only to another sphere of 
experience, and must pass through another probationary 
state before it can be truly said of them: "Blessed are the 
dead which die in the Lord." 

They upon whom the second death, of which we read 
in the Apocalypse (Revelation xx. 6), hath no power, are 
those who have obeyed God's commands, and have 
washed their robes white through the sufferings of the 
flesh and the triumphs of Spirit. Thus they have reached 
the goal in divine Science, by knowing Him in whom they 
have believed. This knowledge is not the forbidden fruit 
of sin, sickness, and death, but it is the fruit which grows 
on the "tree of life." This is the understanding of God, 
whereby man is found in the image and likeness of 
good, not of evil; of health, not of sickness; of Life, not 
of death. 

God is All-in-all. Hence He is in Himself only, in His 
own nature and character, and is perfect being, or con- 
sciousness. He is all the Life and Mind there is or can be. 
Within Himself is every embodiment of Life and Mind. 

If He is All, He can have no consciousness of anything 
unlike Himself; because, if He is omnipresent, there can 
be nothing outside of Himself. 

Now this self-same God is our helper. He pities us. 
He has mercy upon us, and guides every event of our 



4 UNITY OF GOOD 

careers. He is near to them who adore Him. To under- 
stand Him, without a single taint of our mortal, finite sense 
of sin, sickness, or death, is to approach Him and become 
like Him. 

Truth is God, and in God's law. This law declares 
that Truth is All, and there is no error. This law of Truth 
destroys every phase of error. To gain a temporary con- 
sciousness of God's law is to feel, in a certain finite human 
sense, that God comes to us and pities us; but the attain- 
ment of the understanding of His presence, through the 
Science of God, destroys our sense of imperfection, or 
of His absence, through a diviner sense that God is all 
true consciousness; and this convinces us that, as we 
get still nearer Him, we must forever lose our own con- 
sciousness of error. 

But how could we lose all consciousness of error, if God 
be conscious of it? God has not forbidden man to know 
Him; on the contrary, the Father bids man have the 
same Mind "which was also in Christ Jesus," — which 
was certainly the divine Mind; but God does forbid man's 
acquaintance with evil. Why? Because evil is no part 
of the divine knowledge. 

John's Gospel declares (xvii. 3) that "life eternal" con- 
sists in the knowledge of the only true God, and of Jesus 
Christ, whom He has sent. Surely from such an under- 
standing of Science, such knowing, the vision of sin is 
wholly excluded. 

Nevertheless, at the present crude hour, no wise men or 



CAUTION IN THE TRUTH 5 

women will rudely or prematurely agitate a theme involv- 
ing the All of infinity. 

Rather will they rejoice in the small understanding 
they have already gained of the wholeness of Deity, and 
work gradually and gently up toward the perfect thought 
divine. This meekness will increase their apprehension 
of God, because their mental struggles and pride of opin- 
ion will proportionately diminish. 

Every one should be encouraged not to accept any per- 
sonal opinion on so great a matter, but to seek the divine 
Science of this question of Truth by following upward indi- 
vidual convictions, undisturbed by the frightened sense of 
any need of attempting to solve every Life-problem in a day. 

"Great is the mystery of godliness/' says Paul; and 
mystery involves the unknown. No stubborn purpose to 
force conclusions on this subject will unfold in us a higher 
sense of Deity; neither will it promote the Cause of Truth 
or enlighten the individual thought. 

Let us respect the rights of conscience and the liberty 
of the sons of God, so letting our "moderation be known 
to all men." Let no enmity, no untempered controversy, 
spring up between Christian Science students and Chris- 
tians who wholly or partially differ from them as to the 
nature of sin and the marvellous unity of man with God 
shadowed forth in scientific thought. Rather let the 
stately goings of this wonderful part of Truth be left to 
the supernal guidance. 

"These are but parts of Thy ways," says Job; and the 



6 UNITY OF GOOD 

whole is greater than its parts. Our present understanding 
is but "the seed within itself/' for it is divine Science, 
" bearing fruit after its kind." 

Sooner or later the whole human race will learn that, in 
proportion as the spotless selfhood of God is understood, 
human nature will be renovated, and man will receive a 
higher selfhood, derived from God, and the redemption 
of mortals from sin, sickness, and death be established on 
everlasting foundations. 

The Science of physical harmony, as now presented to 
the people in divine light, is radical enough to promote 
as forcible collisions of thought as the age has strength 
to bear. Until the heavenly law of health, according to 
Christian Science, is firmly grounded, even the thinkers 
are not prepared to answer intelligently leading questions 
about God and sin, and the world is far from ready to 
assimilate such a grand and all-absorbing verity concern- 
ing the divine nature and character as is embraced in the 
theory of God's blindness to error and ignorance of sin. 
No wise mother, though a graduate of Wellesley College, 
will talk to her babe about the problems of Euclid. 

Not much more than a half-century ago the assertion 
of universal salvation provoked discussion and horror, 
similar to what our declarations about sin and Deity must 
arouse, if hastily pushed to the front while the platoons of 
Christian Science are not yet thoroughly drilled in the 
plainer manual of their spiritual armament. "Wait 
patiently on the Lord;" and in less than another fifty 



CAUTION IN THE TRUTH 7 

years His name will be magnified in the apprehension of 
this new subject, as already He is glorified in the wide 
extension of belief in the impartial grace of God, — 
shown by the changes at Andover Seminary and in multi- 
tudes of other religious folds. 

Nevertheless, though I thus speak, and from my heart 
of hearts, it is due both to Christian Science and myself 
to make also the following statement: When I have most 
clearly seen and most sensibly felt that the infinite recog- 
nizes no disease, this has not separated me from God, but 
has so bound me to Him as to enable me instantaneously to 
heal a cancer which had eaten its way to the jugular vein. 

In the same spiritual condition I have been able to re- 
place dislocated joints and raise the dying to instantaneous 
health. People are now living who can bear witness to 
these cures. Herein is my evidence, from on high, that 
the views here promulgated on this subject are correct. 

Certain self-proved propositions pour into my waiting 
thought in connection with these experiences; and here is 
one such conviction: that an acknowledgment of the per- 
fection of the infinite Unseen confers a power nothing else 
can. An incontestable point in divine Science is, that 
because God is All, a realization of this fact dispels even 
the sense or consciousness of sin, and brings us nearer to 
God, bringing out the highest phenomena of the All- 
Mind. 



SEEDTIME AND HARVEST 

ET another query now be considered, which gives 
-*-^ much trouble to many earnest thinkers before Science 
answers it. 

Is anything real of which the physical senses are cognizant? 

Everything is as real as you make it, and no more so. 
What you see, hear, feel, is a mode of consciousness, and 
can have no other reality than the sense you entertain 
of it. 

It is dangerous to rest upon the evidence of the senses, 
for this evidence is not absolute, and therefore not real, 
in our sense of the word. All that is beautiful and good 
in your individual consciousness is permanent. That 
which is not so is illusive and fading. My insistence upon 
a proper understanding of the unreality of matter and 
evil arises from their deleterious effects, physical, moral, 
and intellectual, upon the race. 

All forms of error are uprooted in Science, on the same 
basis whereby sickness is healed, — namely, by the es- 
tablishment, through reason, revelation, and Science, of 
the nothingness of every claim of error, even the doc- 
trine of heredity and other physical causes. You demon- 
strate the process of Science, and it proves my view 



SEEDTIME AND HARVEST 9 

conclusively, that mortal mind is the cause of all disease. 
Destroy the mental sense of the disease, and the disease 
itself disappears. Destroy the sense of sin, and sin itself 
disappears. 

Material and sensual consciousness are mortal. Hence 
they must, some time and in some way, be reckoned un- 
real. That time has partially come, or my words would 
not have been spoken. Jesus has made the way plain, 

— so plain that all are without excuse who walk not in 
it; but this way is not the path of physical science, human 
philosophy, or mystic psychology. 

The talent and genius of the centuries have wrongly 
reckoned. They have not based upon revelation their 
arguments and conclusions as to the source and resources 
of being, — its combinations, phenomena, and outcome, 

— but have built instead upon the sand of human reason. 
They have not accepted the simple teaching and life of 
Jesus as the only true solution of the perplexing problem 
of human existence. 

Sometimes it is said, by those who fail to understand 
me, that I monopolize; and this is said because ideas 
akin to mine have been held by a few spiritual think- 
ers in all ages. So they have, but in a far different 
form. Healing has gone on continually; yet healing, as 
I teach it, has not been practised since the days of 
Christ. 

What is the cardinal point of the difference in my meta- 
physical system? This: that by knowing the unreality of 



10 UNITY OF GOOD 

disease, sin, and death, you demonstrate the allness of God. 
This difference wholly separates my system from all others. 
The reality of these so-called existences I deny, because 
they are not to be found in God, and this system is built 
on Him as the sole cause. It would be difficult to name 
any previous teachers, save Jesus and his apostles, who 
have thus taught. 

If there be any monopoly in my teaching, it lies in this 
utter reliance upon the one God, to whom belong all 
things. 

Life is God, or Spirit, the supersensible eternal. The 
universe and man are the spiritual phenomena of this one 
infinite Mind. Spiritual phenomena never converge toward 
aught but infinite Deity. Their gradations are spiritual 
and divine; they cannot collapse, or lapse into their op- 
posites, for God is their divine Principle. They live, 
because He lives; and they are eternally perfect, because 
He is perfect, and governs them in the Truth of divine 
Science, whereof God is the Alpha and Omega, the centre 
and circumference. 

To attempt the calculation of His mighty ways, from 
the evidence before the material senses, is fatuous. It is 
like commencing with the minus sign, to learn the prin- 
ciple of positive mathematics. 

God was not in the whirlwind. He is not the blind 
force of a material universe. Mortals must learn this; 
unless, pursued by their fears, they would endeavor to 
hide from His presence under their own falsities, and call 



SEEDTIME AND HARVEST 11 

in vain for the mountains of unholiness to shield them 
from the penalty of error. 

Jesus taught us to walk over, not into or with, the cur- 
rents of matter, or mortal mind. His teachings beard 
the lions in their dens. He turned the water into wine, 
he commanded the winds, he healed the sick, — all in 
direct opposition to human philosophy and so-called 
natural science. He annulled the laws of matter, showing 
them to be laws of mortal mind, not of God. He showed 
the need of changing this mind and its abortive laws. He 
demanded a change of consciousness and evidence, and 
effected this change through the higher laws of God. 
The palsied hand moved, despite the boastful sense of 
physical law and order. Jesus stooped not to human 
consciousness, nor to the evidence of the senses. He 
heeded not the taunt, "That withered hand looks very 
real and feels very real;" but he cut off this vain boast- 
ing and destroyed human pride by taking away the ma- 
terial evidence. If his patient was a theologian of some 
bigoted sect, a physician, or a professor of natural phi- 
losophy, — according to the ruder sort then prevalent, — 
he never thanked Jesus for restoring his senseless hand; 
but neither red tape nor indignity hindered the divine 
process. Jesus required neither cycles of time nor thought 
in order to mature fitness for perfection and its possibili- 
ties. He said that the kingdom of heaven is here, and 
is included in Mind; that while ye say, There are yet four 
months, and then cometh the harvest, I say, Look up, 



12 UNITY OF GOOD 

not down, for your fields are already white for the harvest; 
and gather the harvest by mental, not material processes. 
The laborers are few in this vineyard of Mind-sowing and 
reaping; but let them apply to the waiting grain the curv- 
ing sickle of Mind's eternal circle, and bind it with bands 
of Soul. 



THE DEEP THINGS OF GOD 

Q1CIENCE reverses the evidence of the senses in the- 
^ ology, on the same principle that it does in astronomy. 
Popular theology makes God tributary to man, coming at 
human call; whereas the reverse is true in Science. Men 
must approach God reverently, doing their own work in 
obedience to divine law, if they would fulfil the intended 
harmony of being. 

The principle of music knows nothing of discord. God 
is harmony's selfhood. His universal laws, His unchange- 
ableness, are not infringed in ethics any more than in 
music. To Him there is no moral inharmony; as we shall 
learn, proportionately as we gain the true understanding 
of Deity. If God could be conscious of sin, His infinite 
power would straightway reduce the universe to chaos. 

If God has any real knowledge of sin, sickness, and 

death, they must be eternal; since He is, in the very 

fibre of His being, "without beginning of years or end of 

days." If God knows that which is not permanent, it 

follows that He knows something which He must learn 

to unknow, for the benefit of our race. 

Such a view would bring us upon an outworn theological 

13 



14 UNITY OF GOOD 

platform, which contains such planks as the divine repent- 
ance, and the belief that God must one day do His 
work over again, because it was not at first done 
aright. 

Can it be seriously held, by any thinker, that long after 
God made the universe, — earth, man, animals, plants, 
the sun, the moon, and "the stars also," — He should so 
gain wisdom and power from past experience that He 
could vastly improve upon His own previous work, — as 
Burgess, the boatbuilder, remedies in the Volunteer the 
shortcomings of the Puritan's model? 

Christians are commanded to grow in grace. Was it 
necessary for God to grow in grace, that He might rectify 
His spiritual universe? 

The Jehovah of limited Hebrew faith might need 
repentance, because His created children proved sinful; 
but the New Testament tells us of " the Father of lights, 
with whom is no variableness, neither shadow of turning." 
God is not the shifting vane on the spire, but the 
corner-stone of living rock, firmer than everlasting hills. 

As God is Mind, if this Mind is familiar with evil, all 
cannot be good therein. Our infinite model would be 
taken away. What is in eternal Mind must be reflected 
in man, Mind's image. How then could man escape, or 
hope to escape, from a knowledge which is everlasting in 
his creator? 

God never said that man would become better by learn- 
ing to distinguish evil from good, — but the contrary, that 



THE DEEP THINGS OF GOD 15 

by this knowledge, by man's first disobedience, came 
"death into the world, and all our woe." 

"Shall mortal man be more just than God?" asks the 
poet-patriarch. May men rid themselves of an incubus 
which God never can throw off? Do mortals know more 
than God, that they may declare Him absolutely cognizant 
of sin? 

God created all things, and pronounced them good. 
Was evil among these good things? Man is God's child 
and image. If God knows evil, so must man, or the like- 
ness is incomplete, the image marred. 

If man must be destroyed by the knowledge of evil, 
then his destruction comes through the very knowledge 
caught from God, and the creature is punished for his 
likeness to his creator. 

God is commonly called the sinless, and man the sinful; 
but if the thought of sin could be possible in Deity, would 
Deity then be sinless? Would God not of necessity take 
precedence as the infinite sinner, and human sin become 
only an echo of the divine? 

Such vagaries are to be found in heathen religious his- 
tory. There are, or have been, devotees who worship not 
the good Deity, who will not harm them, but the bad 
deity, who seeks to do them mischief, and whom there- 
fore they wish to bribe with prayers into quiescence, 
as a criminal appeases, with a money-bag, the venal 
officer. 

Surely this is no Christian worship! In Christianity 



16 UNITY OF GOOD 

man bows to the infinite perfection which he is bidden to 
imitate. In Truth, such terms as divine sin and infinite 
sinner are unheard-of contradictions, — absurdities; but 
would they be sheer nonsense, if God has, or can have, 
a real knowledge of sin? 



WAYS HIGHER THAN OUR WAYS 

A LIE has only one chance of successful deception, — 
■**- to be accounted true. Evil seeks to fasten all error 
upon God, and so make the lie seem part of eternal Truth. 

Emerson says, "Hitch your wagon to a star." I say, 
Be allied to the deific power, and all that is good will aid 
your journey, as the stars in their courses fought against 
Sisera. (Judges v. 20.) Hourly, in Christian Science, 
man thus weds himself with God, or rather he ratifies a 
union predestined from all eternity; but evil ties its wagon- 
load of offal to the divine chariots, — or seeks so to do, — 
that its vileness may be christened purity, and its darkness 
get consolation from borrowed scintillations. 

Jesus distinctly taught the arrogant Pharisees that, from 
the beginning, their father, the devil, was the would-be 
murderer of Truth. A right apprehension of the wonder- 
ful utterances of him who "spake as never man spake," 
would despoil error of its borrowed plumes, and trans- 
form the universe into a home of marvellous light, — "a 
consummation devoutly to be wished." 

Error says God must know evil because He knows all 

things; but Holy Writ declares God told our first parents 

that in the day when they should partake of the fruit of 

evil, they must surely die. Would it not absurdly follow 

17 



18 UNITY OF GOOD 

that God must perish, if He knows evil and evil neces- 
sarily leads to extinction? Rather let us think of God as 
saying, I am infinite good; therefore I know not evil. 
Dwelling in light, I can see only the brightness of My 
own glory. 

Error may say that God can never save man from sin, 
if He knows and sees it not; but God says, I am too pure 
to behold iniquity, and destroy everything that is unlike 
Myself. 

Many fancy that our heavenly Father reasons thus: 
If pain and sorrow were not in My mind, I could not 
remedy them, and wipe the tears from the eyes of My chil- 
dren. Error says you must know grief in order to console 
it. Truth, God, says you oftenest console others in 
troubles that you have not. Is not our comforter always 
from outside and above ourselves? 

God says, I show My pity through divine law, not 
through human. It is My sympathy with and My knowl- 
edge of harmony (not inharmony) which alone enable Me 
to rebuke, and eventually destroy, every supposition of 
discord. 

Error says God must know death in order to strike at 
its root; but God saith, I am ever-conscious Life, and 
thus I conquer death; for to be ever conscious of Life is 
to be never conscious of death. I am All. A knowledge 
of aught beside Myself is impossible. 

If such knowledge of evil were possible to God, it would 
lower His rank. 



WAYS HIGHER THAN OUR WAYS 19 

With God, knowledge, is necessarily foreknowledge ; and 
foreknowledge and foreordination must be one, in an in- 
finite Being. What Deity foreknows, Deity must fore- 
ordain; else He is not omnipotent, and, like ourselves, 
He foresees events which are contrary to His creative will, 
yet which He cannot avert. 

If God knows evil at all, He must have had foreknowl- 
edge thereof; and if He foreknew it, He must virtually 
have intended it, or ordered it aforetime, — foreordained 
it; else how could it have come into the world? 

But this we cannot believe of God; for if the supreme 
good could predestine or foreknow evil, there would be 
sin in Deity, and this would be the end of infinite moral 
unity. " If therefore the light that is in thee be darkness, 
how great is that darkness!" On the contrary, evil is 
only a delusive deception, without any actuality which 
Truth can know. 



RECTIFICATIONS 

T TOW is a mistake to be rectified? By reversal or re- 
■*■ ^ vision, — by seeing it in its proper light, and then 
turning it or turning from it. 

We undo the statements of error by reversing them. 

Through these three statements, or misstatements, evil 
comes into authority: — 

First : The Lord created it. 

Second : The Lord knows it. 

Third: I am afraid of it. 

By a reverse process of argument evil must be de- 
throned: — 

First: God never made evil. 

Second: He knows it not. 

Third : We therefore need not fear it. 

Try this process, dear inquirer, and so reach that per- 
fect Love which "casteth out fear," and then see if this 
Love does not destroy in you all hate and the sense of evil. 
You will awake to the perception of God as All-in-all. 
You will find yourself losing the knowledge and the opera- 
tion of sin, proportionably as you realize the divine in- 
finitude and believe that He can see nothing outside of 

His own focal distance. 

20 



A COLLOQUY 

TN Romans (ii. 15) we read the apostle's description of 
■* mental processes wherein human thoughts are "the 
mean while accusing or else excusing one another." If we 
observe our mental processes, we shall find that we are 
perpetually arguing with ourselves; yet each mortal is 
not two personalities, but one. 

In like manner good and evil talk to one another; yet 
they are not two but one, for evil is naught, and good only 
is reality. 

Evil. God hath said, "Ye shall eat of every tree of the 
garden." If you do not, your intellect will be circum- 
scribed and the evidence of your personal senses be de- 
nied. This would antagonize individual consciousness 
and existence. 

Good. The Lord is God. With Him is no conscious- 
ness of evil, because there is nothing beside Him or 
outside of Him. Individual consciousness in man is 
inseparable from good. There is no sensible matter, no 
sense in matter; but there is a spiritual sense, a sense of 
Spirit, and this is the only consciousness belonging to true 
individuality, or a divine sense of being. 

21 



22 UNITY OF GOOD 

Evil. Why is this so? 

Good. Because man is made after God's eternal like- 
ness, and this likeness consists in a sense of harmony and 
immortality, in which no evil can possibly dwell. You 
may eat of the fruit of Godlikeness, but as to the fruit of 
ungodliness, which is opposed to Truth, — ye shall not 
touch it, lest ye die. 

Evil. But I would taste and know error for myself. 

Good. Thou shalt not admit that error is something 
to know or be known, to eat or be eaten, to see or be seen, 
to feel or be felt. To admit the existence of error would 
be to admit the truth of a lie. 

Evil. But there is something besides good. God 
knows that a knowledge of this something is essential to 
happiness and life. A lie is as genuine as Truth, though 
not so legitimate a child of God. Whatever exists must 
come from God, and be important to our knowledge. 
Error, even, is His offspring. 

Good. Whatever cometh not from the eternal Spirit, 
has its origin in the physical senses and material brains, 
called human intellect and will-power, — alias intelligent 
matter. 

In Shakespeare's tragedy of King Lear, it was the 



A COLLOQUY 23 

traitorous and cruel treatment received by old Gloster 
from his bastard son Edmund which makes true the lines : 

The gods are just, and of our pleasant vices 
Make instruments to scourge us. 

His lawful son, Edgar, was to his father ever loyal. Now 
God has no bastards to turn again and rend their Maker. 
The divine children are born of law and order, and Truth 
knows only such. 

How well the Shakespearean tale agrees with the word 
of Scripture, in Hebrews xii. 7, 8 : " If ye endure chasten- 
ing, God dealeth with you as with sons; for what son is 
he whom the father chasteneth not? But if ye be with- 
out chastisement, whereof all are partakers, then are ye 
bastards, and not sons." 

The doubtful or spurious evidence of the senses is not 
to be admitted, — especially when they testify concern- 
ing Spirit, whereof they are confessedly incompetent to 
speak. 

Evil. But mortal mind and sin really exist! 

Good. How can they exist, unless God has created 
them? And how can He create anything so wholly unlike 
Himself and foreign to His nature? An evil material mind, 
so-called, can conceive of God only as like itself, and 
knowing both evil and good; but a purely good and 
spiritual consciousness has no sense whereby to cognize 



24 UNITY OF GOOD 

evil. Mortal mind is the opposite of immortal Mind, and 
sin the opposite of goodness. I am the infinite All. From 
me proceedeth all Mind, all consciousness, all individu- 
ality, all being. My Mind is divine good, and cannot 
drift into evil. To believe in minds many is to depart 
from the supreme sense of harmony. Your assumptions 
insist that there is more than the one Mind, more than the 
one God; but verily I say unto you, God is All-in-all; 
and you can never be outside of His oneness. 

Evil. I am a finite consciousness, a material individu- 
ality, — a mind in matter, which is both evil and good. 

Good. All consciousness is Mind; and Mind is God, — 
an infinite, and not a finite consciousness. This conscious- 
ness is reflected in individual consciousness, or man, whose 
source is infinite Mind. There is no really finite mind, no 
finite consciousness. There is no material substance, for 
Spirit is all that endureth, and hence is the only substance. 
There is, can be, no evil mind, because Mind is God. 
God and His ideas — that is, God and the universe — 
constitute all that exists. Man, as God's offspring, must 
be spiritual, perfect, eternal. 

Evil. I am something separate from good or God. I 
am substance. My mind is more than matter. In my 
mortal mind, matter becomes conscious, and is able to see, 
taste, hear, feel, smell. Whatever matter thus affirms is 



A COLLOQUY 25 

mainly correct. If you, O good, deny this, then I deny 
your truthfulness. If you say that matter is unconscious, 
you stultify my intellect, insult my conscience, and dispute 
self-evident facts; for nothing can be clearer than the 
testimony of the five senses. 

Good. Spirit is the only substance. Spirit is God, and 
God is good; hence good is the only substance, the only 
Mind. Mind is not, cannot be, in matter. It sees, hears, 
feels, tastes, smells as Mind, and not as matter. Matter 
cannot talk; and hence, whatever it appears to say of 
itself is a lie. This lie, that Mind can be in matter, — 
claiming to be something beside God, denying Truth and 
its demonstration in Christian Science, — this lie I declare 
an illusion. This denial enlarges tHe human intellect by 
removing its evidence from sense to Soul, and from finite- 
ness into infinity. It honors conscious human individu- 
ality by showing God as its source. 

Evil. I am a creator, — but upon a material, not a 
spiritual basis. I give life, and I can destroy life. 

Good. Evil is not a creator. God, good, is the only 
creator. Evil is not conscious or conscientious Mind; it 
is not individual, not actual. Evil is not spiritual, and 
therefore has no groundwork in Life, whose only source 
is Spirit. The elements which belong to the eternal All, — 
Life, Truth, Love, — evil can never take away. 



26 UNITY OF GOOD 

Evil. I am intelligent matter; and matter is egoistic, 
having its own innate selfhood and the capacity to evolve 
mind. God is in matter, and matter reproduces God. 
From Him come my forms, near or remote. This is my 
honor, that God is my author, authority, governor, dis- 
poser. I am proud to be in His outstretched hands, and 
I shirk all responsibility for myself as evil, and for my 
varying manifestations. 

Good. You mistake, O evil! God is not your authority 
and law. Neither is He the author of the material changes, 
the phantasma, a belief in which leads to such teaching 
as we find in the hymn- verse so often sung in church: — 

Chance and change are busy ever, 

Man decays and ages move ; 
But His mercy waneth never, — 

God is wisdom, God is love. 

Now if it be true that God's power never waneth, how 
can it be also true that chance and change are universal 
factors, — that man decays? Many ordinary Christians 
protest against this stanza of Bowring's, and its sentiment 
is foreign to Christian Science. If God be changeless good- 
ness, as sings another line of this hymn, what place has 
chance in the divine economy? Nay, there is in God 
naught fantastic. All is real, all is serious. The phan- 
tasmagoria is a product of human dreams. 



THE EGO 

TT^ROM various friends comes inquiry as to the meaning 
* of a word employed in the foregoing colloquy. 

There are two English words, often used as if they were 
synonyms, which really have a shade of difference between 
them. 

An egotist is one who talks much of himself. Egotism 
implies vanity and self-conceit. 

Egoism is a more philosophical word, signifying a 
passionate love of self, which doubts all existence except 
its own. An egoist, therefore, is one uncertain of every- 
thing except his own existence. 

Applying these distinctions to evil and God, we shall 
find that evil is egotistic, — boastful, but fleeing like a 
shadow at daybreak; while God is egoistic, knowing only 
His own all-presence, all-knowledge, all-power. 



27 



SOUL 

X71 TE read in the Hebrew Scriptures, "The soul that 
* * sinneth, it shall die." 

What is Soul? Is it a reality within the mortal body? 
Who can prove that? Anatomy has not descried nor 
described Soul. It was never touched by the scalpel nor 
cut with the dissecting-knife. The five physical senses do 
not cognize it. 

Who, then, dares define Soul as something within man? 
As well might you declare some old castle to be peopled 
with demons or angels, though never a light or form was 
discerned therein, and not a spectre had ever been seen 
going in or coming out. 

The common hypotheses about souls are even more 
vague than ordinary material conjectures, and have less 
basis; because material theories are built on the evidence 
of the material senses. 

Soul must be God; since we learn Soul only as we learn 
God, by spiritualization. As the five senses take no cog- 
nizance of Soul, so they take no cognizance of God. What- 
ever cannot be taken in by mortal mind — by human 
reflection, reason, or belief — must be the unfathomable 
Mind, which "eye hath not seen, nor ear heard." Soul 

28 



SOUL 29 

stands in this relation to every hypothesis as to its human 
character. 

If Soul sins, it is a sinner, and Jewish law condemned 
the sinner to death, — as does all criminal law, to a cer- 
tain extent. 

Spirit never sins, because Spirit is God. Hence, as 
Spirit, Soul is sinless, and is God. Therefore there is, 
there can be, no spiritual death. 

Transcending the evidence of the material senses, 
Science declares God to be the Soul of all being, the only 
Mind and intelligence in the universe. There is but one 
God, one Soul, or Mind, and that one is infinite, supplying 
all that is absolutely immutable and eternal, — Truth, 
Life, Love. 

Science reveals Soul as that which the senses cannot 
define from any standpoint of their own. What the physi- 
cal senses miscall soul, Christian Science defines as mate- 
rial sense; and herein lies the discrepancy between the 
true Science of Soul and that material sense of a soul which 
that very sense declares can never be seen or measured or 
weighed or touched by physicality. 

Often we can elucidate the deep meaning of the Scrip- 
tures by reading sense instead of soul, as in the Forty- 
second Psalm: "Why art thou cast down, O my soul 
[sense] ? . . . Hope thou in God [Soul] : for I shall yet 
praise Him, who is the health of my countenance, and 
my God [my Soul, immortality] ." 

The Virgin-mother's sense being uplifted to behold 



30 UNITY OF GOOD 

Spirit as the sole origin of man, she exclaimed, "My soul 
[spiritual sense] doth magnify the Lord." 

Human language constantly uses the word soul for 
sense. This it does under the delusion that the senses can 
reverse the spiritual facts of Science, whereas Science re- 
verses the testimony of the material senses. 

Soul is Life, and being spiritual Life, never sins. Mate- 
rial sense is the so-called material life. Hence this lower 
sense sins and suffers, according to material belief, till 
divine understanding takes away this belief and restores 
Soul, or spiritual Life. "He restoreth my soul," says 
David. 

In his first epistle to the Corinthians (xv. 45) Paul writes : 
"The first man iidam was made a living soul; the last 
Adam was made a quickening spirit." The apostle re- 
fers to the second Adam as the Messiah, our blessed 
Master, whose interpretation of God and His creation — 
by restoring the spiritual sense of man as immortal instead 
of mortal — made humanity victorious over death and the 
grave. 

When I discovered the power of Spirit to break the 
cords of matter, through a change in the mortal sense of 
things, then I discerned the last Adam as a quickening 
Spirit, and understood the meaning of the declaration of 
Holy Writ, "The first shall be last," —the living Soul 
shall be found a quickening Spirit; or, rather, shall reflect 
the Life of the divine Arbiter. 



THERE IS NO MATTER 

4S /^\OD is a Spirit' ' (or, more accurately translated, 

^* "God is Spirit"), declares the Scripture (John iv. 
24), "and they that worship Him must worship Him in 
spirit and in truth." 

If God is Spirit, and God is All, surely there can be no 
matter; for the divine All must be Spirit. 

The tendency of Christianity is to spiritualize thought 
and action. The demonstrations of Jesus annulled the 
claims of matter, and overruled laws material as emphati- 
cally as they annihilated sin. 

According to Christian Science, the first idolatrous claim 
of sin is, that matter exists; the second, that matter is 
substance; the third, that matter has intelligence; and 
the fourth, that matter, being so endowed, produces life 
and death. 

Hence my conscientious position, in the denial of matter, 
rests on the fact that matter usurps the authority of God, 
Spirit and the nature and character of matter, the anti- 
pode of Spirit, include all that denies and defies Spirit, in 
quantity or quality. 

This subject can be enlarged. It can be shown, in 
detail, that evil does not obtain in Spirit, God; and that 
God, or good, is Spirit alone; whereas, evil does, accord- 

31 



32 UNITY OF GOOD 

ing to belief, obtain in matter; and that evil is a false 
claim, — false to God, false to Truth and Life. Hence 
the claim of matter usurps the prerogative of God, saying, 
"I am a creator. God made me, and I make man and 
the material universe." 

Spirit is the only creator, and man, including the uni- 
verse, is His spiritual concept. By matter is commonly 
meant mind, — not the highest Mind, but a false form of 
mind. This so-called mind and matter cannot be sep- 
arated in origin and action. 

What is this mind? It is not the Mind of Spirit; for 
spiritualization of thought destroys all sense of matter as 
substance, Life, or intelligence, and enthrones God in 
the eternal qualities of His being. 

This lower, misnamed mind is a false claim, a sup- 
positional mind, which I prefer to call mortal mind. True 
Mind is immortal. This mortal mind declares itself ma- 
terial, in sin, sickness, and death, virtually saying, "I am 
the opposite of Spirit, of holiness, harmony, and Life." 

To this declaration Christian Science responds, even 
as did our Master: "You were a murderer from the begin- 
ning. The truth abode not in you. You are a liar, and 
the father of it." Here it appears that a liar was in the 
neuter gender, — neither masculine nor feminine. Hence 
it was not man (the image of God) who lied, but the false 
claim to personality, which I call mortal mind; a claim 
which Christian Science uncovers, in order to demonstrate 
the falsity of the claim. 



THERE IS NO MATTER 33 

There are lesser arguments which prove matter to be 
identical with mortal mind, and this mind a lie. 

The physical senses (matter really having no sense) 
give the only pretended testimony there can be as to the 
existence of a substance called matter. Now these senses, 
being material, can only testify from their own evidence, 
and concerning themselves; yet we have it on divine 
authority: "If I bear witness of myself, my witness is 
not true." (John v. 31.) 

In other words : matter testifies of itself, " I am matter; " 
but unless matter is mind, it cannot talk or testify; and 
if it is mind, it is certainly not the Mind of Christ, not 
the Mind that is identical with Truth. 

Brain, thus assuming to testify, is only matter within 
the skull, and is believed to be mind only through error 
and delusion. Examine that form of matter called brains, 
and you find no mind therein. Hence the logical sequence, 
that there is in reality neither matter nor mortal mind, 
but that the self -testimony of the physical senses is 
false. 

Examine these witnesses for error, or falsity, and 
observe the foundations of their testimony, and you will 
find them divided in evidence, mocking the Scripture 
(Matthew xviii. 16), "In the mouth of two or three wit- 
nesses every word may be established.' ' 

Sight. Mortal mind declares that matter sees through 
the organizations of matter, or that mind sees by means 



34 UNITY OF GOOD 

of matter. Disorganize the so-called material structure, 
and then mortal mind says, "I cannot see;" and declares 
that matter is the master of mind, and that non-intelligence 
governs. Mortal mind admits that it sees only material 
images, pictured on the eye's retina. 

What then is the line of the syllogism? It must be this: 
That matter is not seen; that mortal mind cannot see 
without matter; and therefore that the whole function 
of material sight is an illusion, a lie. 

Here comes in the summary of the whole matter, where- 
with we started : that God is All, and God is Spirit; there- 
fore there is nothing but Spirit; and consequently there 
is no matter. 

Touch. Take another train of reasoning. Mortal mind 
says that matter cannot feel matter; yet put your finger 
on a burning coal, and the nerves, material nerves, do 
feel matter. 

Again I ask: What evidence does mortal mind afford 
that matter is substantial, is hot or cold? Take away 
mortal mind, and matter could not feel what it calls sub- 
stance. Take away matter, and mortal mind could not 
cognize its own so-called substance, and this so-called 
mind would have no identity. Nothing would remain to 
be seen or felt. 

What is substance? What is the reality of God and the 
universe? Immortal Mind is the real substance, — Spirit, 
Life, Truth, and Love. 



THERE IS NO MATTER 35 

Taste. Mortal mind says, "I taste; and this is sweet, 
this is sour." Let mortal mind change, and say that sour 
is sweet, and so it would be. If every mortal mind believed 
sweet to be sour, it would be so; for the qualities of matter 
are but qualities of mortal mind. Change the mind, and 
the quality changes. Destroy the belief, and the quality 
disappears. 

The so-called material senses are found, upon examina- 
tion, to be mortally mental, instead of material. Reduced 
to its proper denomination, matter is mortal mind; yet, 
strictly speaking, there is no mortal mind, for Mind is 
immortal, and is not matter, but Spirit. 

Force. What is gravitation? Mortal mind says gravi- 
tation is a material power, or force. I ask, Which was 
first, matter or power? That which was first was God, 
immortal Mind, the Parent of all. But God is Truth, 
and the forces of Truth are moral and spiritual, not physi- 
cal. They are not the merciless forces of matter. What 
then are the so-called forces of matter? They are the 
phenomena of mortal mind, and matter and mortal 
mind are one; and this one is a misstatement of Mind, 
God. 

A molecule, as matter, is not formed by Spirit; for 
Spirit is spiritual consciousness alone. Hence this spiritual 
consciousness can form nothing unlike itself, Spirit, and 
Spirit is the only creator. The material atom is an out- 
lined falsity of consciousness, which can gather additional 



36 UNITY OF GOOD 

evidence of consciousness and life only as it adds lie to lie. 
This process it names material attraction, and endows 
with the double capacity of creator and creation. 

From the beginning this lie was the false witness against 
the fact that Spirit is All, beside which there is no other 
existence. The use of a lie is that it unwittingly confirms 
Truth, when handled by Christian Science, which reverses 
false testimony and gains a knowledge of God from op- 
posite facts, or phenomena. 

This whole subject is met and solved by Christian 
Science according to Scripture. Thus we see that Spirit 
is Truth and eternal reality; that matter is the opposite 
of Spirit, — referred to in the New Testament as the flesh 
at war with Spirit; hence, that matter is erroneous, tran- 
sitory, unreal. 

A further proof of this is the demonstration, according 
to Christian Science, that by the reduction and the rejec- 
tion of the claims of matter (instead of acquiescence 
therein) man is improved physically, mentally, morally, 
spiritually. 

To deny the existence or reality of matter, and yet 
admit the reality of moral evil, sin, or to say that the 
divine Mind is conscious of evil, yet is not conscious of 
matter, is erroneous. This error stultifies the logic of 
divine Science, and must interfere with its practical 
demonstration. 



IS THERE NO DEATH? 

TESUS not only declared himself "the way" and a the 
** truth," but also "the life." God is Life; and as 
there is but one God, there can be but one Life. Must 
man die, then, in order to inherit eternal life and enter 
heaven? 

Our Master said, "The kingdom of heaven is at hand." 
Then God and heaven, or Life, are present, and death is 
not the real stepping-stone to Life and happiness. They 
are now and here; and a change in human consciousness, 
from sin to holiness, would reveal this wonder of being. 
Because God is ever present, no boundary of time can 
separate us from Him and the heaven of His presence; 
and because God is Life, all Life is eternal. 

Is it unchristian to believe there is no death? Not 
unless it be a sin to believe that God is Life and All-in-all. 
Evil and disease do not testify of Life and God. 

Human beings are physically mortal, but spiritually 
immortal. The evil accompanying physical personality 
is illusive and mortal; but the good attendant upon spirit- 
ual individuality is immortal. Existing here and now, 
this unseen individuality is real and eternal. The so- 
called material senses, and the mortal mind which is mis- 

37 



38 UNITY OF GOOD 

named man, take no cognizance of spiritual individuality, 
which manifests immortality, whose Principle is God. 

To God alone belong the indisputable realities of being. 
Death is a contradiction of Life, or God; therefore it is 
not in accordance with His law, but antagonistic thereto. 

Death, then, is error, opposed to Truth, — even the 
unreality of mortal mind, not the reality of that Mind 
which is Life. Error has no life, and is virtually without 
existence. Life is real; and all is real which proceeds 
from Life and is inseparable from it. 

It is unchristian to believe in the transition called ma- 
terial death, since matter has no life, and such misbelief 
must enthrone another power, an imaginary life, above 
the living and true God. A material sense of life robs 
God, by declaring that not He alone is Life, but that some- 
thing else also is life, — thus affirming the existence and 
rulership of more gods than one. This idolatrous and 
false sense of life is all that dies, or appears to die. 

The opposite understanding of God brings to light 
Life and immortality. Death has no quality of Life; and 
no divine fiat commands us to believe in aught which is 
unlike God, or to deny that He is Life eternal. 

Life as God, moral and spiritual good, is not seen in 
the mineral, vegetable, or animal kingdoms. Hence the 
inevitable conclusion that Life is not in these kingdoms, 
and that the popular views to this effect are not up to the 
Christian standard of Life, or equal to the reality of being, 
whose Principle is God. 



IS THERE NO DEATH? 39 

When "the Word" is "made flesh" among mortals, 
the Truth of Life is rendered practical on the body. 
Eternal Life is partially understood; and sickness, sin, 
and death yield to holiness, health, and Life, — that is, 
to God. The lust of the flesh and the pride of physical 
life must be quenched in the divine essence, — that om- 
nipotent Love which annihilates hate, that Life which 
knows no death. 

"Who hath believed our report?" Who understands 
these sayings? He to whom the arm of the Lord is re- 
vealed. He loves them from whom divine Science removes 
human weakness by divine strength, and who unveil the 
Messiah, whose name is Wonderful. 

Man has no underived power. That selfhood is false 
which opposes itself to God, claims another father, and 
denies spiritual sonship; but as many as receive the knowl- 
edge of God in Science must reflect, in some degree, the 
power of Him who gave and giveth man dominion over 
all the earth. 

As soldiers of the cross we must be brave, and let Science 
declare the immortal status of man, and deny the evidence 
of the material senses, which testify that man dies. 

As the image of God, or Life, man forever reflects and 
embodies Life, not death. The material senses testify 
falsely. They presuppose that God is good and that man 
is evil, that Deity is deathless, but that man dies, losing 
the divine likeness. 

Science and material sense conflict at all points, from 



40 UNITY OF GOOD 

the revolution of the earth to the fall of a sparrow. * It is 
mortality only that dies. 

To say that you and I, as mortals, will not enter this 
dark shadow of material sense, called death, is to assert 
what we have not proved; but man in Science never dies. 
Material sense, or the belief of life in matter, must perish, 
in order to prove man deathless. 

As Truth supersedes error, and bears the fruits of Love, 
this understanding of Truth subordinates the belief in 
death, and demonstrates Life as imperative in the divine 
order of being. 

Jesus declares that they who believe his sayings will 
never die; therefore mortals can no more receive ever- 
lasting life by believing in death, than they can become 
perfect by believing in imperfection and living imperfectly. 

Life is God, and God is good. Hence Life abides in 
man, if man abides in good, if he lives in God, who holds 
Life by a spiritual and not by a material sense of being. 

A sense of death is not requisite to a proper or true 
sense of Life, but beclouds it. Death can never alarm or 
even appear to him who fully understands Life. The 
death-penalty comes through our ignorance of Life, — of 
that which is without beginning and without end, — and 
is the punishment of this ignorance. 

Holding a material sense of Life, and lacking the spirit- 
ual sense of it, mortals die, in belief, and regard all things 
as temporal. A sense material apprehends nothing strictly 
belonging to the nature and office of Life. It conceives 



IS THERE NO DEATH? 41 

and beholds nothing but mortality, and has but a feeble 
concept of immortality. 

In order to reach the true knowledge and consciousness 
of Life, we must learn it of good. Of evil we can never 
learn it, because sin shuts out the real sense of Life, and 
brings in an unreal sense of suffering and death. 

Knowledge of evil, or belief in it, involves a loss of the 
true sense of good, God; and to know death, or to believe 
in it, involves a temporary loss of God, the infinite and 
only Life. 

Resurrection from the dead (that is, from the belief in 
death) must come to all sooner or later; and they who 
have part in this resurrection are they upon whom the 
second death has no power. 

The sweet and sacred sense of the permanence of man's 
unity with his Maker can illumine our present being with 
a continual presence and power of good, opening wide 
the portal from death into Life; and when this Life shall 
appear "we shall be like Him/' and we shall go to the 
Father, not through death, but through Life; not through 
error, but through Truth. 

All Life is Spirit, and Spirit can never dwell in its antag- 
onist, matter. Life, therefore, is deathless, because God 
cannot be the opposite of Himself. In Christian Science 
there is no matter; hence matter neither lives nor dies. 
To the senses, matter appears to both live and die, and 
these phenomena appear to go on ad infinitum; but such 
a theory implies perpetual disagreement with Spirit. 



42 UNITY OF GOOD 

Life, God, being everywhere, it must follow that death 
can be nowhere; because there is no place left for it. 

Soul, Spirit, is deathless. Matter, sin, and death are 
not the outcome of Spirit, holiness, and Life. What then 
are matter, sin, and death? They can be nothing except 
the results of material consciousness; but material con- 
sciousness can have no real existence, because it is not a 
living — that is to say, a divine and intelligent — reality. 

That man must be vicious before he can be virtuous, 
dying before he can be deathless, material before he can 
be spiritual, is an error of the senses; for the very opposite 
of this error is the genuine Science of being. 

Man, in Science, is as perfect and immortal now, as 
when "the morning stars sang together, and all the sons 
of God shouted for joy." 

With Christ, Life was not merely a sense of existence, 
but a sense of might and ability to subdue material con- 
ditions. No wonder "people were astonished at his doc- 
trine; for he taught them as one having authority, and 
not as the scribes." 

As defined by Jesus, Life had no beginning; nor was 
it the result of organization, or of an infusion of power 
into matter. To him, Life was Spirit. 

Truth, defiant of error or matter, is Science, dispelling 
a false sense and leading man into the true sense of self- 
hood and Godhood; wherein the mortal does not develop 
the immortal, nor the material the spiritual, but wherein 
true manhood and womanhood go forth in the radiance 



IS THERE NO DEATH? 43 

of eternal being and its perfections, unchanged and 
unchangeable. 

This generation seems too material for any strong dem- 
onstration over death, and hence cannot bring out the 
infinite reality of Life, — namely, that there is no death, 
but only Life. The present mortal sense of being is too 
finite for anchorage in infinite good, God, because mortals 
now believe in the possibility that Life can be evil. 

The achievement of this ultimatum of Science, com- 
plete triumph over death, requires time and immense 
spiritual growth. 

I have by no means spoken of myself, I cannot speak 
of myself as "sufficient for these things." I insist only 
upon the fact, as it exists in divine Science, that man dies 
not, and on the words of the Master in support of this 
verity, —words which can never "pass away till all be 
fulfilled." 

Because of these profound reasons I urge Christians 
to have more faith in living than in dying. I exhort them 
to accept Christ's promise, and unite the influence of their 
own thoughts with the power of his teachings, in the 
Science of being. This will interpret the divine power to 
human capacity, and enable us to apprehend? or lay hold 
upon, "that for which," as Paul says in the third chapter 
of Philippians, we are also "apprehended of [or grasped 
by] Christ Jesus," — the ever-present Life which knows 
no death, the omnipresent Spirit which knows no matter. 



PERSONAL STATEMENTS 

Ayr ANY misrepresentations are made concerning my 
•^ A doctrines, some of which are as unkind and unjust 
as they are untrue; but I can only repeat the Master's 
words: "They know not what they do." 

The foundations of these assertions, like the structure 
raised thereupon, are vain shadows, repeating — if the 
popular couplet may be so paraphrased — 

The old, old story, 
Of Satan and his lie. 

In the days of Eden, humanity was misled by a false 
personality, —a talking snake, —-according to Biblical 
history. This pretender taught the opposite of Truth. 
This abortive ego, this fable of error, is laid bare in 
Christian Science. 

Human theories call, or miscall, this evil a child of God. 
Philosophy would multiply and subdivide personality into 
everything that exists, whether expressive or not expressive 
of the Mind which is God. Human wisdom says of evil, 
"The Lord knows it!" thus carrying out the serpent's 
assurance: "In the day ye eat thereof [when you, lie, get 
the floor], then your eyes shall be opened [you shall be 
conscious matter], and ye shall be as gods, knowing good 

44 



PERSONAL STATEMENTS 45 

and evil [you shall believe a lie, and this lie shall seem 
truth]." 

Bruise the head of this serpent, as Truth and "the 
woman" are doing in Christian Science, and it stings 
your heel, rears its crest proudly, and goes on saying, "Am 
I not myself? Am I not mind and matter, person and 
thing?" We should answer: "Yes! you are indeed your- 
self, and need most of all to be rid of this self, for it is 
very far from God's likeness." 

The egotist must come down and learn, in humility, 
that God never made evil. An evil ego, and his assumed 
power, are falsities. These falsities need a denial. The 
falsity is the teaching that matter can be conscious; and 
conscious matter implies pantheism. This pantheism I 
unveil. I try to show its all-pervading presence in certain 
forms of theology and philosophy, where it becomes error's 
affirmative to Truth's negative. Anatomy and physiology 
make mind-matter a habitant of the cerebellum, whence 
it telegraphs and telephones over its own body, and goes 
forth into an imaginary sphere of its own creation and 
limitation, until it finally dies in order to better itself. 
But Truth never dies, and death is not the goal which 
Truth seeks. 

The evil ego has but the visionary substance of matter. 
It lacks the substance of Spirit, — Mind, Life, Soul. Mor- 
tal mind is self -creative and self-sustained, until it becomes 
non-existent. It has no origin or existence in Spirit, im- 
mortal Mind, or good. Matter is not truly conscious; and 



46 UNITY OF GOOD 

mortal error, called mind, is not Godlike. These are the 
shadowy and false, which neither think nor speak. 

All Truth is from inspiration and revelation, — from 
Spirit, not from flesh. 

We do not see much of the real man here, for he is 
God's man; while ours is man's man. 

I do not deny, I maintain, the individuality and reality 
of man; but I do so on a divine Principle, not based on a 
human conception and birth. The scientific man and his 
Maker are here; and you would be none other than this 
man, if you would subordinate the fleshly perceptions to 
the spiritual sense and source of being. 

Jesus said, "I and my Father are one." He taught no 
selfhood as existent in matter. In his identity there is no 
evil. Individuality and Life were real to him only as 
spiritual and good, not as material or evil. This incensed 
the rabbins against Jesus, because it was an indignity to 
their personality; and this personality they regarded as 
both good and evil, as is still claimed by the worldly-wise. 
To them evil was even more the ego than was the good. 
Sin, sickness, and death were evil's concomitants. This 
evil ego they believed must extend throughout the uni- 
verse, as being equally identical and self-conscious with 
God. This ego was in the earthquake, thunderbolt, and 
tempest. 

The Pharisees fought Jesus on this issue. It furnished 
the battle-ground of the past, as it does of the present. 
The fight was an effort to enthrone evil. Jesus assumed 



PERSONAL STATEMENTS 47 

the burden of disproof by destroying sin, sickness, and 
death, to sight and sense. 

Nowhere in Scripture is evil connected with good, the 
being of God, and with every passing hour it is losing its 
false claim to existence or consciousness. All that can 
exist is God and His idea. 



CREDO 

TT is fair to ask of every one a reason for the faith within. 
Though it be but to repeat my twice-told tale, — nay, 
the tale already told a hundred times, — yet ask, and I 
will answer. 

Do you believe in Godf 

I believe more in Him than do most Christians, for I 
have no faith in any other thing or being. He sustains 
my individuality. Nay, more — • He is my individuality 
and my Life. Because He lives, I live. He heals all my 
ills, destroys my iniquities, deprives death of its sting, and 
robs the grave of its victory. 

To me God is All. He is best understood as Supreme 
Being, as infinite and conscious Life, as the affectionate 
Father and Mother of all He creates; but this divine 
Parent no more enters into His creation than the human 
father enters into his child. His creation is not the Ego, 
but the reflection of the Ego. The Ego is God Himself, 
the infinite Soul. 

I believe that of which I am conscious through the 
understanding, however faintly able to demonstrate Truth 

and Love. 

48 



CREDO 49 

Do you believe in man f 

I believe in the individual man, for I understand that 
man is as definite and eternal as God, and that man is 
coexistent with God, as being the eternally divine idea. 
This is demonstrable by the simple appeal to human 
consciousness. 

But I believe less in the sinner, wrongly named man. 
The more I understand true humanhood, the more I see it 
to be sinless, — as ignorant of sin as is the perfect Maker. 

To me the reality and substance of being are good, and 
nothing else. Through the eternal reality of existence I 
reach, in thought, a glorified consciousness of the only 
living God and the genuine man. So long as I hold evil 
in consciousness, I cannot be wholly good. 

You cannot simultaneously serve the mammon of 
materiality and the God of spirituality. There are not 
two realities of being, two opposite states of existence. 
One should appear real to us, and the other unreal, or we 
lose the Science of being. Standing in no basic Truth, we 
make "the worse appear the better reason," and the un- 
real masquerades as the real, in our thought. 

Evil is without Principle. Being destitute of Principle, 
it is devoid of Science. Hence it is undemonstrable, with- 
out proof. This gives me a clearer right to call evil a nega- 
tion, than to affirm it to be something which God sees and 
knows, but which He straightway commands mortals to 
shun or relinquish, lest it destroy them. This notion of 



50 UNITY OF GOOD 

the destructibility of Mind implies the possibility of its 
defilement; but how can infinite Mind be defiled? 

Do you believe in matter? 

I believe in matter only as I believe in evil, that it is 
something to be denied and destroyed to human conscious- 
ness, and is unknown to the Divine. We should watch 
and pray that we enter not into the temptation of panthe- 
istic belief in matter as sensible mind. We should sub- 
jugate it as Jesus did, by a dominant understanding of 
Spirit. 

At best, matter is only a phenomenon of mortal mind, 
of which evil is the highest degree; but really there is no 
such thing as mortal mind, — though we are compelled 
to use the phrase in the endeavor to express the underlying 
thought. 

In reality there are no material states or stages of con- 
sciousness, and matter has neither Mind nor sensation. 
Like evil, it is destitute of Mind, for Mind is God. 

The less consciousness of evil or matter mortals have, 
the easier it is for them to evade sin, sickness, and death, 
— which are but states of false belief, — and awake from 
the troubled dream, a consciousness which is without 
Mind or Maker. 

Matter and evil cannot be conscious, and consciousness 
should not be evil. Adopt this rule of Science, and you 
will discover the material origin, growth, maturity, and 
death of sinners, as the history of man disappears and the 



CREDO 51 

everlasting facts of being appear, wherein man is the re- 
flection of immutable good. 

Reasoning from false premises, — that Life is material, 
that immortal Soul is sinful, and hence that sin is eternal, 
— the reality of being is neither seen, felt, heard, nor un- 
derstood. Human philosophy and human reason can 
never make one hair white or black, except in belief; 
whereas the demonstration of God, as in Christian Science, 
is gained through Christ as perfect manhood. 

In pantheism the world is bereft of its God, whose 
place is ill supplied by the pretentious usurpation, by 
matter, of the heavenly sovereignty. 

What say you of woman f 

Man is the generic term for all humanity. Woman is 
the highest species of man, and this word is the generic 
term for all women; but not one of all these individualities 
is an Eve or an Adam. They have none of them lost their 
harmonious state, in the economy of God's wisdom and 
government. 

The Ego is divine consciousness, eternally radiating 
throughout all space in the idea of God, good, and not of 
His opposite, evil. The Ego is revealed as Father, Son, 
and Holy Ghost; but the full Truth is found only in 
divine Science, where we see God as Life, Truth, and 
Love. In the scientific relation of man to God, man is 
reflected not as human soul, but as the divine ideal, whose 
Soul is not in body, but is God, — the divine Principle of 



52 UNITY OF GOOD 

man. Hence Soul is sinless and immortal, in contradis- 
tinction to the supposition that there can be sinful souls or 
immortal sinners. 

This Science of God and man is the Holy Ghost, which 
reveals and sustains the unbroken and eternal harmony 
of both God and the universe. It is the kingdom of heaven, 
the ever-present reign of harmony, already with us. Hence 
the need that human consciousness should become divine, 
in the coincidence of God and man, in contradistinction 
to the false consciousness of both good and evil, God and 
devil, — of man separated from his Maker. This is the 
precious redemption of soul, as mortal sense, through 
Christ's immortal sense of Truth, which presents Truth's 
spiritual idea, man and woman. 

What say you of evilf 

God is not the so-called ego of evil; for evil, as a sup- 
position, is the father of itself, — of the material world, 
the flesh, and the devil. From this falsehood arise the 
self-destroying elements of this world, its unkind forces, 
its tempests, lightnings, earthquakes, poisons, rabid 
beasts, fatal reptiles, and mortals. 

Why are earth and mortals so elaborate in beauty, color, 
and form, if God has no part in them? By the law of 
opposites. The most beautiful blossom is often poisonous, 
and the most beautiful mansion is sometimes the home of 
vice. The senses, not God, Soul, form the condition of 
beautiful evil, and the supposed modes of self-conscious 



CREDO 53 

matter, which make a beautiful lie. Now a lie takes its 
pattern from Truth, by reversing Truth. So evil and all 
its forms are inverted good. God never made them; but 
the lie must say He made them, or it would not be evil. 
Being a lie, it would be truthful to call itself a lie; and by 
calling the knowledge of evil good, and greatly to be de- 
sired, it constitutes the lie an evil. 

The reality and individuality of man are good and God- 
made, and they are here to be seen and demonstrated; it 
is only the evil belief that renders them obscure. 

Matter and evil are anti-Christian, the antipodes of 
Science. To say that Mind is material, or that evil is 
Mind, is a misapprehension of being, — a mistake which 
will die of its own delusion; for being self -contradictory, 
it is also self -destructive. The harmony of man's being is 
not built on such false foundations, which are no more 
logical, philosophical, or scientific than would be the as- 
sertion that the rule of addition is the rule of subtraction, 
and that sums done under both rules would have one 
quotient. 

Man's individuality is not a mortal mind or sinner; or 
else he has lost his true individuality as a perfect child of 
God. Man's Father is not a mortal mind and a sinner; 
or else the immortal and unerring Mind, God, is not his 
Father; but God is man's origin and loving Father, 
hence that saying of Jesus, "Call no man your father 
upon the earth: for one is your Father, which is in 
heaven." 



54 UNITY OF GOOD 

The bright gold of Truth is dimmed by the doctrine of 
mind in matter. 

To say there is a false claim, called sickness, is to admit 
all there is of sickness; for it is nothing but a false claim. 
To be healed, one must lose sight of a false claim. If the 
claim be present to the thought, then disease becomes as 
tangible as any reality. To regard sickness as a false 
claim, is to abate the fear of it; but this does not destroy 
the so-called fact of the claim. In order to be whole, we 
must be insensible to every claim of error. 

As with sickness, so is it with sin. To admit that sin 
has any claim whatever, just or unjust, is to admit a dan- 
gerous fact. Hence the fact must be denied; for if sin's 
claim be allowed in any degree, then sin destroys the 
at-one-ment, or oneness with God, — a unity which sin 
recognizes as its most potent and deadly enemy. 

If God knows sin, even as a false claimant, then ac- 
quaintance with that claimant becomes legitimate to 
mortals, and this knowledge would not be forbidden; but 
God forbade man to know evil at the very beginning, 
when Satan held it up before man as something desirable 
and a distinct addition to human wisdom, because the 
knowledge of evil would make man a god, — a representa- 
tion that God both knew and admitted the dignity of evil. 

Which is right, — God, who condemned the knowledge 
of sin and disowned its acquaintance, or the serpent, who 
pushed that claim with the glittering audacity of diabolical 
and sinuous logic? 



SUFFERING FROM OTHERS' THOUGHTS 

JESUS accepted the one fact whereby alone the rule of 
*" Life can be demonstrated, —namely, that there is 
no death. 

In his real self he bore no infirmities. Though "a man 
of sorrows, and acquainted with grief/' as Isaiah says of 
him, he bore not his sins, but ours, "in his own body on 
the tree." "He was bruised for our iniquities; . . . and 
with his stripes we are healed." 

He was the Way-shower; and Christian Scientists who 
would demonstrate "the way" must keep close to his 
path, that they may win the prize. "The way," in the 
flesh, is the suffering which leads out of the flesh. "The 
way," in Spirit, is "the way" of Life, Truth, and Love, 
redeeming us from the false sense of the flesh and the 
wounds it bears. This threefold Messiah reveals the self- 
destroying ways of error and the life-giving way of Truth. 

Job's faith and hope gained him the assurance that 
the so-called sufferings of the flesh are unreal. We shall 
learn how false are the pleasures and pains of material 
sense, and behold the truth of being, as expressed in his 
conviction, "Yet in my flesh shall I see God;" that is, 
Now and here shall I behold God, divine Love. 

55 



56 UNITY OF GOOD 

The chaos of mortal mind is made the stepping-stone 
to the cosmos of immortal Mind. 

If Jesus suffered, as the Scriptures declare, it must have 
been from the mentality of others; since all suffering 
comes from mind, not from matter, and there could be 
no sin or suffering in the Mind which is God. Not his 
own sins, but the sins of the world, "crucified the Lord 
of glory," and "put him to an open shame." 

Holding a quickened sense of false environment, and 
suffering from mentality in opposition to Truth, are signifi- 
cant of that state of mind which the actual understanding 
of Christian Science first eliminates and then destroys. 

In the divine order of Science every follower of Christ 
shares his cup of sorrows. He also suffereth in the flesh, 
and from the mentality which opposes the law of Spirit; 
but the divine law is supreme, for it freeth him from the 
law of sin and death. 

Prophets and apostles suffered from the thoughts of 
others. Their conscious being was not fully exempt from 
physicality and the sense of sin. 

Until he awakes from his delusion, he suffers least from 
sin who is a hardened sinner. The hypocrite's affections 
must first be made to fret in their chains; and the pangs 
of hell must lay hold of him ere he can change from flesh 
to Spirit, become acquainted with that Love which is 
without dissimulation and endureth all things. Such 
mental conditions as ingratitude, lust, malice, hate, con- 
stitute the miasma of earth. More obnoxious than 



SUFFERING FROM OTHERS' THOUGHTS 57 

Chinese stenchpots are these dispositions which offend 
the spiritual sense. 

Anatomically considered, the design of the material 
senses is to warn mortals of the approach of danger by 
the pain they feel and occasion; but as this sense disap- 
pears it foresees the impending doom and foretells the 
pain. Man's refuge is in spirituality, "under the shadow 
of the Almighty." 

The cross is the central emblem of human history. 
Without it there is neither temptation nor glory. When 
Jesus turned and said, "Who hath touched me?" he 
must have felt the influence of the woman's thought; for 
it is written that he felt that "virtue had gone out of him." 
His pure consciousness was discriminating, and rendered 
this infallible verdict; but he neither held her error by 
affinity nor by infirmity, for it was detected and dismissed. 

This gospel of suffering brought life and bliss. This 
is earth's Bethel in stone, —its pillow, supporting the 
ladder which reaches heaven. 

Suffering was the confirmation of Paul's faith. Through 
"a thorn in the flesh" he learned that spiritual grace was 
sufficient for him. 

Peter rejoiced that he was found worthy to suffer for 
Christ; because to suffer with him is to reign with him. 

Sorrow is the harbinger of joy. Mortal throes of anguish 
forward the birth of immortal being; but divine Science 
wipes away all tears. 

The only conscious existence in the flesh is error of some 



58 UNITY OF GOOD 

sort, — sin, pain, death, — a false sense of life and happi- 
ness. Mortals, if at ease in so-called existence, are in their 
native element of error, and must become dis-eased, dis- 
quieted, before error is annihilated. 

Jesus walked with bleeding feet the thorny earth-road, 
treading "the winepress alone." His persecutors said 
mockingly, "Save thyself, and come down from the cross." 
This was the very thing he was doing, coming down from 
the cross, saving himself after the manner that he had 
taught, by the law of Spirit's supremacy; and this was 
done through what is humanly called agony. 

Even the ice-bound hypocrite melts in fervent heat, 
before he apprehends Christ as "the way." The Master's 
sublime triumph over all mortal mentality was immortal- 
ity's goal. He was too wise not to be willing to test the 
full compass of human woe, being " in all points tempted 
like as we are, yet without sin." 

Thus the absolute unreality of sin, sickness, and death 
were revealed, — a revelation that beams on mortal sense 
as the midnight sun shines over the Polar Sea. 



THE SAVIOUR'S MISSION 

TF there is no reality in evil, why did the Messiah come 
to the world, and from what evils was it his purpose 
to save humankind? How, indeed, is he a Saviour, if 
the evils from which he saves are nonentities? 

Jesus came to earth; but the Christ (that is, the divine 
idea of the divine Principle which made heaven and earth) 
was never absent from the earth and heaven; hence the 
phraseology of Jesus, who spoke of the Christ as one who 
came down from heaven, yet as "the Son of man which 
is in heaven." (John hi. 13.) By this we understand 
Christ to be the divine idea brought to the flesh in the son 
of Mary. 

Salvation is as eternal as God. To mortal thought 
Jesus appeared as a child, and grew to manhood, to suffer 
before Pilate and on Calvary, because he could reach and 
teach mankind only through this conformity to mortal 
conditions; but Soul never saw the Saviour come and go, 
because the divine idea is always present. 

Jesus came to rescue men from these very illusions to 
which he seemed to conform: from the illusion which 
calls sin real, and man a sinner, needing a Saviour; the 
illusion which calls sickness real, and man an invalid, 
needing a physician; the illusion that death is as real as 

59 



60 UNITY OF GOOD 

Life. From such thoughts — mortal inventions, one and 
all — Christ Jesus came to save men, through ever-present 
and eternal good. 

Mortal man is a kingdom divided against itself. With 
the same breath he articulates truth and error. We say 
that God is All, and there is none beside Him, and then 
talk of sin and sinners as real. We call God omnipotent 
and omnipresent, and then conjure up, from the dark 
abyss of nothingness, a powerful presence named evil. We 
say that harmony is real, and inharmony is its opposite, 
and therefore unreal; yet we descant upon sickness, sin, 
and death as realities. 

With the tongue "bless we God, even the Father; and 
therewith curse we men, who are made after the simili- 
tude [human concept] of God. Out of the same mouth 
proceedeth blessing and cursing. My brethren, these 
things ought not so to be." (James iii. 9, 10.) Mortals 
are free moral agents, to choose whom they would serve. 
If God, then let them serve Him, and He will be unto them 
All-in-all. 

If God is ever present, He is neither absent from Him- 
self nor from the universe. Without Him, the universe 
w^ould disappear, and space, substance, and immortality 
be lost. St. Paul says, "And if Christ be not raised, your 
faith is vain; ye are yet in your sins." (1 Corinthians xv. 
17.) Christ cannot come to mortal and material sense, 
which sees not God. This false sense of substance must 
yield to His eternal presence, and so dissolve. Rising 



THE SAVIOUR'S MISSION 61 

above the false, to the true evidence of Life, is the resur- 
rection that takes hold of eternal Truth. Coming and 
going belong to mortal consciousness. God is "the same 
yesterday, and to-day, and forever." 

To material sense, Jesus first appeared as a helpless 
human babe; but to immortal and spiritual vision he was 
one with the Father, even the eternal idea of God, that 
was — and is — neither young nor old, neither dead nor 
risen. The mutations of mortal sense are the evening and 
the morning of human thought, — the twilight and dawn 
of earthly vision, which precedeth the nightless radiance 
of divine Life. Human perception, advancing toward 
the apprehension of its nothingness, halts, retreats, and 
again goes forward; but the divine Principle and Spirit 
and spiritual man are unchangeable, — neither advancing, 
retreating, nor halting. 

Our highest sense of infinite good in this mortal sphere 
is but the sign and symbol, not the substance of good. 
Only faith and a feeble understanding make the earthly 
acme of human sense. "The life which I now live in the 
flesh I live by the faith of the Son of God." (Galatians 
ii. 20.) 

Christian Science is both demonstration and fruition, 
but how attenuated are our demonstration and realization 
of this Science ! Truth, in divine Science, is the stepping- 
stone to the understanding of God; but the broken and 
contrite heart soonest discerns this truth, even as the help- 
less sick are soonest healed by it. Invalids say, "I have 



62 UNITY OF GOOD 

recovered from sickness;'' when the fact really remains, 
in divine Science, that they never were sick. 

The Christian saith, "Christ (God) died for me, and 
came to save me;" yet God dies not, and is the ever- 
presence that neither comes nor goes, and man is forever 
His image and likeness. "The things which are seen are 
temporal; but the things which are not seen are eternal." 
(2 Corinthians iv. 18.) This is the mystery of godliness 
— that God, good, is never absent, and there is none be- 
side good. Mortals can understand this only as they reach 
the Life of good, and learn that there is no Life in evil. 
Then shall it appear that the true ideal of omnipotent and 
ever-present good is an ideal wherein and wherefor there 
is no evil. Sin exists only as a sense, and not as Soul. 
Destroy this sense of sin, and sin disappears. Sickness, 
sin, or death is a false sense of Life and good. Destroy 
this trinity of error, and you find Truth. 

In Science, Christ never died. In material sense Jesus 
died, and lived. The fleshly Jesus seemed to die, though 
he did not. The Truth or Life in divine Science — un- 
disturbed by human error, sin, and death — saith forever, 
" I am the living God, and man is My idea, never in matter, 
nor resurrected from it." "Why seek ye the living among 
the dead? He is not here, but is risen." (Luke xxiv. 5, 6.) 
Mortal sense, confining itself to matter, is all that can be 
buried or resurrected. 

Mary had risen to discern faintly God's ever-presence, 
and that of His idea, man; but her mortal sense, re vers- 



THE SAVIOUR'S MISSION 63 

ing Science and spiritual understanding, interpreted this 
appearing as a risen Christ. The I am was neither buried 
nor resurrected. The Way, the Truth, and the Life were 
never absent for a moment. This trinity of Love lives 
and reigns forever. Its kingdom, not apparent to material 
sense, never disappeared to spiritual sense, but remained 
forever in the Science of being. The so-called appearing, 
disappearing, and reappearing of ever-presence, in whom 
is no variableness or shadow of turning, is the false human 
sense of that light which shineth in darkness, and the 
darkness comprehendeth it not. 



RUDIMENTAL 
DIVINE SCIENCE 

BY 

MARY BAKER EDDY 

AUTHOR OF SCIENCE AND HEALTH WITH KEY TO 
THE SCRIPTURES 



BOSTON, U.S.A. 
Published by Allison V. Stewart 

for the trustees under the will of mary baker g. eddy 

Falmouth and St. Paul Streets 

1917 



Authorized Literature of 

The First Church of Christ, Scientist 

in Boston, Massachusetts 



Copyright, 1891, IQ08 
By Mary Baker G. Eddy 



All rights reserved 



THIS LITTLE BOOK 

IS 

TENDERLY AND RESPECTFULLY DEDICATED 

TO ALL 

LOYAL STUDENTS, WORKING AND WAITING 

FOR THE ESTABLISHMENT OF THE 

SCIENCE OF MIND-HEALING 

MARY BAKER EDDY 



CONTENTS 



PAGE 



Definition of Christian Science I 

Principle of Christian Science i 

Personality of God I 

Healing Sickness and Sin 2 

Individuality of God 3 

Material and Spiritual Science 4 

Non-existence of Matter 4 

Materiality Intangible 6 

Basis of Mind-healing 6 

Material and Spiritual Man 7 

Demonstration in Healing 8 

Means and Methods 13 

Only One School 16 



KUDIMENTAL DIVINE 

SCIENCE 

How would you define Christian Science? 

A S the law of God, the law of good, interpreting and 
-** demonstrating the divine Principle and rule of 
universal harmony. 

What is the Principle of Christian Science? 

It is God, the Supreme Being, infinite and immortal 
Mind, the Soul of man and the universe. It is our Father 
which is in heaven. It is substance, Spirit, Life, Truth, 
and Love, — these are the deific Principle. 

Do you mean by this that God is a person ? 

The word person affords a large margin for misappre- 
hension, as well as definition. In French the equivalent 
word is personne. In Spanish, Italian, and Latin, it is 
persona. The Latin verb personare is compounded of 
the prefix per (through) and sonar e (to sound). 

In law, Blackstone applies the word personal to bodily 
presence, in distinction from one's appearance (in court, 
for example) by deputy or proxy. 

1 



2 RUDIMENTAL DIVINE SCIENCE 

Other definitions of person, as given by Webster, are 
"a living soul; a self-conscious being; a moral agent; 
especially, a living human being, a corporeal man, woman, 
or child; an individual of the human race." He adds, 
that among Trinitarian Christians the word stands for one 
of the three subjects, or agents, constituting the Godhead. 

In Christian Science we learn that God is definitely indi- 
vidual, and not a person, as that word is used by the best 
authorities, if our lexicographers are right in defining 
person as especially a finite human being; but God is 
personal, if by person is meant infinite Spirit. 

We do not conceive rightly of God, if we think of Him 
as less than infinite. The human person is finite; and 
therefore I prefer to retain the proper sense of Deity by 
using the phrase an individual God, rather than a per- 
sonal God; for there is and can be but one infinite indi- 
vidual Spirit, whom mortals have named God. 

Science defines the individuality of God as supreme 
good, Life, Truth, Love. This term enlarges our sense 
of Deity, takes away the trammels assigned to God by 
finite thought, and introduces us to higher definitions. 

Is healing the sick the whole of Science t 

Healing physical sickness is the smallest part of Chris- 
tian Science. It is only the bugle-call to thought and 
action, in the higher range of infinite goodness. The 
emphatic purpose of Christian Science is the healing of 
sin; and this task, sometimes, may be harder than the 



RUDIMENTAL DIVINE SCIENCE 3 

cure of disease; because, while mortals love to sin, they 
do not love to be sick. Hence their comparative acqui- 
escence in your endeavors to heal them of bodily ills, and 
their obstinate resistance to all efforts to save them from 
sin through Christ, spiritual Truth and Love, which 
redeem them, and become their Saviour, through the 
flesh, from the flesh, — the material world and evil. 

This Life, Truth, and Love — this trinity of good — was 
individualized, to the perception of mortal sense, in the 
man Jesus. His history is emphatic in our hearts, and it 
lives more because of his spiritual than his physical healing. 
His example is, to Christian Scientists, what the models 
of the masters in music and painting are to artists. 

Genuine Christian Scientists will no more deviate mor- 
ally from that divine digest of Science called the Sermon 
on the Mount, than they will manipulate invalids, prescribe 
drugs, or deny God. Jesus' healing was spiritual in its 
nature, method, and design. He wrought the cure of 
disease through the divine Mind, which gives all true 
volition, impulse, and action; and destroys the mental 
error made manifest physically, and establishes the oppo- 
site manifestation of Truth upon the body in harmony 
and health. 

By the individuality of God, do you mean that God has 
a finite form f 

No. I mean the infinite and divine Principle of all 
being, the ever-present I am, filling all space, including 



4 RUDIMENTAL DIVINE SCIENCE 

in itself all Mind, the one Father-Mother God. Life, 
Truth, and Love are this trinity in unity, and their uni- 
verse is spiritual, peopled with perfect beings, harmonious 
and eternal, of which our material universe and men are 
the counterfeits. 

Is God the Principle of all science, or only of Divine or 
Christian Science f 

Science is Mind manifested. It is not material; neither 
is it of human origin. 

All true Science represents a moral and spiritual force, 
which holds the earth in its orbit. This force is Spirit, 
that can "bind the sweet influences of the Pleiades," and 
"loose the bands of Orion." 

There is no material science, if by that term you mean 
material intelligence. God is infinite Mind, hence there 
is no other Mind. Good is Mind, but evil is not Mind. 
Good is not in evil, but in God only. Spirit is not in matter, 
but in Spirit only. Law is not in matter, but in Mind only. 

Is there no matter? 

All is Mind. According to the Scriptures and Christian 
Science, all is God, and there is naught beside Him. " God 
is Spirit;" and we can only learn and love Him through 
His spirit, which brings out the fruits of Spirit and ex- 
tinguishes forever the works of darkness by His marvel- 
lous light. 

The five material senses testify to the existence of 



RUDIMENTAL DIVINE SCIENCE 5 

matter. The spiritual senses afford no such evidence, 
but deny the testimony of the material senses. Which 
testimony is correct? The Bible says: "Let God be 
true, and every man a liar." If, as the Scriptures imply, 
God is All-in-all, then all must be Mind, since God is 
Mind. Therefore in divine Science there is no material 
mortal man, for man is spiritual and eternal, he being 
made in the image of Spirit, or God. 

There is no material sense. Matter is inert, inanimate, 
and sensationless, — considered apart from Mind. Lives 
there a man who has ever found Soul in the body or in 
matter, who has ever seen spiritual substance with the 
eye, who has found sight in matter, hearing in the material 
ear, or intelligence in non-intelligence? If there is any 
such thing as matter, it must be either mind which is 
called matter, or matter without Mind. 

Matter without Mind is a moral impossibility. Mind 
in matter is pantheism. Soul is the only real conscious- 
ness which cognizes being. The body does not see, hear, 
smell, or taste. Human belief says that it does; but 
destroy this belief of seeing with the eye, and we could 
not see materially; and so it is with each of the physical 
senses. 

Accepting the verdict of these material senses, we should 
believe man and the universe to be the football of chance 
and sinking into oblivion. Destroy the five senses as 
organized matter, and you must either become non-exist- 
ent, or exist in Mind only; and this latter conclusion is 






6 RUDIMENTAL DIVINE SCIENCE 

the simple solution of the problem of being, and leads to 
the equal inference that there is no matter. 

The sweet sounds and glories of earth and shy, assum- 
ing manifold forms and colors, — are they not tangible and 
material f 

As Mind they are real, but not as matter. All beauty 
and goodness are in and of Mind, emanating from God; 
but when we change the nature of beauty and goodness 
from Mind to matter, the beauty is marred, through a 
false conception, and, to the material senses, evil takes 
the place of good. 

Has not the truth in Christian Science met a response 
from Prof. S. P. Langley, the young American astronomer ? 
He says that "color is in us," not "in the rose;" and he 
adds that this is not "any metaphysical subtlety," but a 
fact "almost universally accepted, within the last few 
years, by physicists." 

Is not the basis of Mind-healing a destruction of the evi- 
dence of the material senses, and restoration of the true 
evidence of spiritual sense? 

It is, so far as you perceive and understand this predi- 
cate and postulate of Mind-healing; but the Science of 
Mind-healing is best understood in practical demonstra- 
tion. The proof of what you apprehend, in the simplest 
definite and absolute form of healing, can alone answer 
this question of how much you understand of Christian 



RUDIMENTAL DIVINE SCIENCE 7 

Science Mind-healing. Not that all healing is Science, 
by any means; but that the simplest case, healed in Science, 
is as demonstrably scientific, in a small degree, as the most 
difficult case so treated. 

The infinite and subtler conceptions and consistencies 
of Christian Science are set forth in my work Science and 
Health. 

Is man material or spiritual? 

In Science, man is the manifest reflection of God, per- 
fect and immortal Mind. He is the likeness of God; and 
His likeness would be lost if inverted or perverted. 

According to the evidence of the so-called physical 
senses, man is material, fallen, sick, depraved, mortal. 
Science and spiritual sense contradict this, and they afford 
the only true evidence of the being of God and man, the 
material evidence being wholly false. 

Jesus said of personal evil, that "the truth abode not 
in him," because there is no material sense. Matter, as 
matter, has neither sensation nor personal intelligence. 
As a pretension to be Mind, matter is a lie, and "the 
father of lies;" Mind is not in matter, and Spirit cannot 
originate its opposite, named matter. 

According to divine Science, Spirit no more changes its 
species, by evolving matter from Spirit, than natural 
science, so-called, or material laws, bring about altera- 
tion of species by transforming minerals into vegetables 
or plants into animals, — thus confusing and confounding 



8 RUDIMENTAL DIVINE SCIENCE 

the three great kingdoms. No rock brings forth an apple; 
no pine-tree produces a mammal or provides breast-milk 
for babes. 

To sense, the lion of to-day is the lion of six thousand 
years ago; but in Science, Spirit sends forth its own harm- 
less likeness. 

How should I undertake to demonstrate Christian Science 
in healing the sick? 

As I have given you only an epitome of the Principle, 
so I can give you here nothing but an outline of the prac- 
tice. Be honest, be true to thyself, and true to others; 
then it follows thou wilt be strong in God, the eternal 
good. Heal through Truth and Love; there is no other 
healer. 

In all moral revolutions, from a lower to a higher con- 
dition of thought and action, Truth is in the minority and 
error has the majority. It is not otherwise in the field 
of Mind-healing. The man who calls himself a Christian 
Scientist, yet is false to God and man, is also uttering 
falsehood about good. This falsity shuts against him the 
Truth and the Principle of Science, but opens a way 
whereby, through will-power, sense may say the unchris- 
tian practitioner can heal; but Science shows that he makes 
morally worse the invalid whom he is supposed to cure. 

By this I mean that mortal mind should not be falsely 
impregnated. If by such lower means the health is seem- 
ingly restored, the restoration is not lasting, and the patient 



RUDIMENTAL DIVINE SCIENCE 9 

is liable to a relapse, — " The last state of that man is 
worse than the first." 

The teacher of Mind-healing who is not a Christian, 
in the highest sense, is constantly sowing the seeds of 
discord and disease. Even the truth he speaks is more 
or less blended with error; and this error will spring up 
in the mind of his pupil. The pupil's imperfect knowl- 
edge will lead to weakness in practice, and he will be a 
poor practitioner, if not a malpractioner. 

The basis of malpractice is in erring human will, and 
this will is an outcome of what I call mortal mind, — a 
false and temporal sense of Truth, Life, and Love. To 
heal, in Christian Science, is to base your practice on 
immortal Mind, the divine Principle of man's being; and 
this requires a preparation of the heart and an answer 
of the lips from the Lord. 

The Science of healing is the Truth of healing. If 
one is untruthful, his mental state weighs against his 
healing power; and similar effects come from pride, 
envy, lust, and all fleshly vices. 

The spiritual power of a scientific, right thought, with- 
out a direct effort, an audible or even a mental argument, 
has oftentimes healed inveterate diseases. 

The thoughts of the practitioner should be imbued with 
a clear conviction of the omnipotence and omnipresence 
of God; that He is All, and that there can be none beside 
Him; that God is good, and the producer only of good; 
and hence, that whatever militates against health, har- 



10 RUDIMENTAL DIVINE SCIENCE 

mony, or holiness, is an unjust usurper of the throne of 
the controller of all mankind. Note this, that if you have 
power in error, you forfeit the power that Truth bestows, 
and its salutary influence on yourself and others. 

You must feel and know that God alone governs man; 
that His government is harmonious; that He is too pure 
to behold iniquity, and divides His power with nothing 
evil or material; that material laws are only human be- 
liefs, which govern mortals wrongfully. These beliefs arise 
from the subjective states of thought, producing the be- 
liefs of a mortal material universe, — so-called, and of 
material disease and mortality. Mortal ills are but errors 
of thought, — diseases of mortal mind, and not of matter; 
for matter cannot feel, see, or report pain or disease. 

Disease is a thing of thought manifested on the body; 
and fear is the procurator of the thought which causes 
sickness and suffering. Remove this fear by the true 
sense that God is Love, — and that Love punishes nothing 
but sin, — and the patient can then look up to the loving 
God, and know that He afflicteth not willingly the children 
of men, who are punished because of disobedience to His 
spiritual law. His law of Truth, when obeyed, removes 
every erroneous physical and mental state. The belief 
that matter can master Mind, and make you ill, is an 
error which Truth will destroy. 

You must learn to acknowledge God in all His ways. 
It is only a lack of understanding of the allness of God, 
which leads you to believe in the existence of matter, or 



RUDIMENT AL DIVINE SCIENCE 11 

that matter can frame its own conditions, contrary to the 
law of Spirit. 

Sickness is the schoolmaster, leading you to Christ; 
first to faith in Christ; next to belief in God as omnipo- 
tent; and finally to the understanding of God and man 
in Christian Science, whereby you learn that God is good, 
and in Science man is His likeness, the forever reflection of 
goodness. Therefore good is one and All. 

This brings forward the next proposition in Christian 
Science, — namely, that there are no sickness, sin, and 
death in the divine Mind. What seem to be disease, vice, 
and mortality are illusions of the physical senses. These 
illusions are not real, but unreal. Health is the conscious- 
ness of the unreality of pain and disease; or, rather, the 
absolute consciousness of harmony and of nothing else. 
In a moment you may awake from a night-dream; just 
so you can awake from the dream of sickness; but the 
demonstration of the Science of Mind-healing by no means 
rests on the strength of human belief. This demonstra- 
tion is based on a true understanding of God and divine 
Science, which takes away every human belief, and, 
through the illumination of spiritual understanding, re- 
veals the all-power and ever-presence of good, whence 
emanate health, harmony, and Life eternal. 

The lecturer, teacher, or healer who is indeed a Christian 
Scientist, never introduces the subject of human anatomy; 
never depicts the muscular, vascular, or nervous opera- 
tions of the human frame. He never talks about the 



12 RUDIMENTAL DIVINE SCIENCE 

structure of the material body. He never lays his hands 
on the patient, nor manipulates the parts of the body sup- 
posed to be ailing. Above all, he keeps unbroken the Ten 
Commandments, and practises Christ's Sermon on the 
Mount. 

Wrong thoughts and methods strengthen the sense of 
disease, instead of cure it; or else quiet the fear of the 
sick on false grounds, encouraging them in the belief of 
error until they hold stronger than before the belief that 
they are first made sick by matter, and then restored 
through its agency. This fosters infidelity, and is mental 
quackery, that denies the Principle of Mind-healing. If 
the sick are aided in this mistaken fashion, their ailments 
will return, and be more stubborn because the relief is 
unchristian and unscientific. 

Christian Science erases from the minds of invalids 
their mistaken belief that they live in or because of matter, 
or that a so-called material organism controls the health 
or existence of mankind, and induces rest in God, divine 
Love, as caring for all the conditions requisite for the well- 
being of man. As power divine is the healer, why should 
mortals concern themselves with the chemistry of food? 
Jesus said: "Take no thought what ye shall eat." 

The practitioner should also endeavor to free the minds 
of the healthy from any sense of subordination to their 
bodies, and teach them that the divine Mind, not material 
law, maintains human health and life. 

A Christian Scientist knows that, in Science, disease 



RUDIMENTAL DIVINE SCIENCE 13 

is unreal; that Mind is not in matter; that Life is God, 
good; hence Life is not functional, and is neither matter 
nor mortal mind; knows that pantheism and theosophy 
are not Science. Whatever saps, with human belief, 
this basis of Christian Science, renders it impossible to 
demonstrate the Principle of this Science, even in the 
smallest degree. 

A mortal and material body is not the actual individuality 
of man made in the divine and spiritual image of God. 
The material body is not the likeness of Spirit; hence it 
is not the truth of being, but the likeness of error — the 
human belief which saith there is more than one God, — 
there is more than one Life and one Mind. 

In Deuteronomy (iv. 35) we read: "The Lord, He is 
God; there is none else beside Him/' In John (iv. 24) 
we may read: "God is Spirit." These propositions, un- 
derstood in their Science, elucidate my meaning. 

When treating a patient, it is not Science to treat every 
organ in the body. To aver that harmony is the real and 
discord is the unreal, and then give special attention to 
what according to their own belief is diseased, is scientific; 
and if the healer realizes the truth, it will free his patient. 

What are the means and methods of trustworthy Christian 
Scientists t 

These people should not be expected, more than others, 
to give all their time to Christian Science work, receiving 
no wages in return, but left to be fed, clothed, and sheltered 



14 RUDIMENTAL DIVINE SCIENCE 

by charity. Neither can they serve two masters, giving 
only a portion of their time to God, and still be Christian 
Scientists. They must give Him all their services, and 
"owe no man." To do this, they must at present ask a 
suitable price for their services, and then conscientiously 
earn their wages, strictly practising Divine Science, and 
healing the sick. 

The author never sought charitable support, but gave 
fully seven-eighths of her time without remuneration, ex- 
cept the bliss of doing good. The only pay taken for her 
labors was from classes, and often those were put off for 
months, in order to do gratuitous work. She has never 
taught a Primary class without several, and sometimes 
seventeen, free students in it; and has endeavored to take 
the full price of tuition only from those who were able to 
pay. The student who pays must of necessity do better 
than he who does not pay, and yet will expect and require 
others to pay him. No discount on tuition was made on 
higher classes, because their first classes furnished students 
with the means of paying for their tuition in the higher 
instruction, and of doing charity work besides. If the 
Primary students are still impecunious, it is their own 
fault, and this ill-success of itself leaves them unprepared 
to enter higher classes. 

People are being healed by means of my instructions, 
both in and out of class. Many students, who have 
passed through a regular course of instruction from me, 
have been invalids and were healed in the class; but ex- 



RUDIMENTAL DIVINE SCIENCE 15 

perience has shown that this defrauds the scholar, though 
it heals the sick. 

It is seldom that a student, if healed in a class, has left 
it understanding sufficiently the Science of healing to im- 
mediately enter upon its practice. Why? Because the 
glad surprise of suddenly regained health is a shock to 
the mind; and this holds and satisfies the thought with 
exuberant joy. 

This renders the mind less inquisitive, plastic, and tract- 
able; and deep systematic thinking is impracticable until 
this impulse subsides. 

This was the principal reason for advising diseased 
people not to enter a class. Few were taken besides inva- 
lids for students, until there were enough practitioners to 
fill in the best possible manner the department of healing. 
Teaching and healing should have separate departments, 
and these should be fortified on all sides with suitable and 
thorough guardianship and grace. 

Only a very limited number of students can advanta- 
geously enter a class, grapple with this subject, and well 
assimilate what has been taught them. It is impossible 
to teach thorough Christian Science to promiscuous and 
large assemblies, or to persons who cannot be addressed 
individually, so that the mind of the pupil may be dissected 
more critically than the body of a subject laid bare for 
anatomical examination. Public lectures cannot be such 
lessons in Christian Science as are required to empty and 
to fill anew the individual mind. 



16 RUDIMENTAL DIVINE SCIENCE 

If publicity and material control are the motives for 
teaching, then public lectures can take the place of private 
lessons; but the former can never give a thorough knowledge 
of Christian Science, and a Christian Scientist will never 
undertake to fit students for practice by such means. Lec- 
tures in public are needed, but they must be subordinate 
to thorough class instruction in any branch of education. 

None with an imperfect sense of the spiritual significa- 
tion of the Bible, and its scientific relation to Mind- 
healing, should attempt overmuch in their translation of 
the Scriptures into the "new tongue;" but I see that 
some novices, in the truth of Science, and some impostors 
are committing this error. 

Is there more than one school of scientific healing? 

In reality there is, and can be, but one school of the 
Science of Mind-healing. Any departure from Science is 
an irreparable loss of Science. Whatever is said and 
written correctly on this Science originates from the Princi- 
ple and practice laid down in Science and Health, a work 
which I published in 1875. This was the first book, re- 
corded in history, which elucidates a pathological Science 
purely mental. 

Minor shades of difference in Mind-healing have origi- 
nated with certain opposing factions, springing up among 
unchristian students, who, fusing with a class of aspirants 
which snatch at whatever is progressive, call it their first- 
fruits, or else post mortem evidence. 



RUDIMENTAL DIVINE SCIENCE 17 

A slight divergence is fatal in Science. Like certain 
Jews whom St. Paul had hoped to convert from mere 
motives of self-aggrandizement to the love of Christ, these 
so-called schools are clogging the wheels of progress by 
blinding the people to the true character of Christian 
Science, — its moral power, and its divine efficacy to 
heal. 

The true understanding of Christian Science Mind- 
healing never originated in pride, rivalry, or the deification 
of self. The Discoverer of this Science could tell you of 
timidity, of self -distrust, of f riendlessness, toil, agonies, and 
victories under which she needed miraculous vision to 
sustain her, when taking the first footsteps in this 
Science. 

The ways of Christianity have not changed. Meek- 
ness, selflessness, and love are the paths of His testimony 
and the footsteps of His flock. 



The University Press, Cambridge, U. S. A. 



NO AND YES 



NO AND YES 



BY 

MARY BAKER EDDY 

AUTHOR OF SCIENCE AND HEALTH WITH KEY TO 
THE SCRIPTURES 



BOSTON, U.S.A. 
Published by Allison V. Stewart 

for the trustees under the will of mary baker g. eddy 

Falmouth and St. Paul Streets 

1917 



Authorized Literature of 

The First Church of Christ, Scientist 

in Boston, Massachusetts 



Copyright, 1891, 1908 
By Mary Baker G. Eddy 



All Tights reserved 



PREFACE 

"TT was the purpose of each edition of this pamphlet to 
benefit no favored class, but, according to the apostle's 
admonition, to " reprove, rebuke, exhort," and with the 
power and self-sacrificing spirit of Love to correct invol- 
untary as well as voluntary error. 

By a modification of the language, the import of this 
edition is, we trust, transparent to the hearts of all con- 
scientious laborers in the realm of Mind-healing. To 
those who are athirst for the life-giving waters of a true 
divinity, it saith tenderly, " Come and drink ; " and if 
you are babes in Christ, leave the meat and take the 
unadulterated milk of the Word, until you grow to 
apprehend the pure spirituality of Truth. 

MARY BAKER EDDY 



CONTENTS 

Page 

Preface v 

Introduction i 

Disease Unreal 4 

Science of Mind-healing 7 

Is Christian Science of the Same Lineage as 

Spiritualism or Theosophy? 13 

Is Christian Science from Beneath, and not 

from Above? 14 

Is Christian Science Pantheistic? 15 

Is Christian Science Blasphemous? 18 

Is There a Personal Deity? 19 

Is There a Personal Devil? 22 

Is Man a Person? 25 

Has Man a Soul? 28 

Is Sin Forgiven? 30 

Is There any such Thing as Sin? 32 

Is There no Sacrificial Atonement? . . . . 33 

Is There no Intercessory Prayer? 38 

Should Christians Beware of Christian Science ? 41 

vii 



2 NO AND YES 

healing I vindicate; and on its standard have emblazoned 
that crystallized expression, Chkistian Science. 

A spurious and hydra-headed mind-healing is naturally 
glared at by the pulpit, ostracized by the medical faculty, 
and scorned by people of common sense. To aver that 
disease is normal, a God-bestowed and stubborn reality, 
but that you can heal it, leaves you to work against that 
which is natural and a law of being. It is scientific to rob 
disease of all reality; and to accomplish this, you cannot 
begin by admitting its reality. Our Master taught his 
students to deny self, sense, and take up the cross. Men- 
tal healers who admit that disease is real should be made 
to test the feasibility of what they say by healing one case 
audibly, through such an admission, — if this is possible. 
I have healed more disease by the spoken than the un- 
spoken word. 

The honest student of Christian Science is modest in his 
claims and conscientious in duty, waiting and working to 
mature what he has been taught. Institutes furnished 
with such teachers are becoming beacon-lights along the 
shores of erudition; and many who are not teachers have 
large practices and some marked success in healing the 
most defiant forms of disease. 

Dishonesty destroys one's ability to heal mentally. Con- 
ceit cannot avert the effects of deceit. Taking advantage 
of the present ignorance in relation to Christian Science 
Mind-healing, many are flooding our land with conflict- 
ing theories and practice. We should not spread abroad 



NO AND YES 3 

patchwork ideas that in some vital points lack Science. 
How sad it is that envy will bend its bow and shoot its 
arrow at the idea which claims only its inheritance, is nat- 
urally modest, generous, and sincere! while the trespass- 
ing error murders either friend or foe who stands in its 
way. Truly it is better to fall into the hands of God, than 
of man. 

When I revised "Science and Health with Key to the 
Scriptures," in 1878, some irresponsible people insisted 
that my manual of the practice of Christian Science Mind- 
healing should not be made public; but I obeyed a diviner 
rule. People dependent on the rules of this practice for 
their healing, not having lost the Spirit which sustains the 
genuine practice, will put that book in the hands of their 
patients, whom it will heal, and recommend it to their 
students, whom it would enlighten. Every teacher must 
pore over it in secret, to keep himself well informed. The 
Nemesis of the history of Mind-healing notes this hour. 

Dishonesty necessarily stultifies the spiritual sense which 
Mind-healers specially need; and which they must pos- 
sess, in order to be safe members of the community. How 
good and pleasant a thing it is to seek not so much thine 
own as another's good, to sow by the wayside for the way- 
weary, and trust Love's recompense of love. 

Plagiarism from my writings is so common it is be- 
coming odious to honest people; and such compilations, 
instead of possessing the essentials of Christian Science, 
are tempting and misleading. 



4 NO AND YES 

Reading Science and Health has restored the sick to 
health; but the task of learning thoroughly the Science 
of Mind-healing and demonstrating it understanding^ 
had better be undertaken in health than sickness. 



Disease Unreal 

Disease is more than imagination; it is a human error, 
a constituent part of what comprise the whole of mortal 
existence, — namely, material sensation and mental delu- 
sion. But an erring sense of existence, or the error of 
belief, named disease, never made sickness a stubborn 
reality. On the ground that harmony is the truth of be- 
ing, the Science of Mind-healing destroys the feasibility 
of disease; hence error of thought becomes fable instead 
of fact. Science demonstrates the reality of Truth and 
the unreality of the error. A self-evident proposition, in 
the Science of Mind-healing, is that disease is unreal; 
and the efficacy of my system, beyond other systems of 
medicine, vouches for the validity of that statement. Sin 
and disease are not scientific, because they embody not 
the idea of divine Principle, and are not the phenomena 
of the immutable laws of God; and they do not arise 
from the divine consciousness and true constituency of 
being. 

The unreality of sin, disease, and death, rests on the 
exclusive truth that being, to be eternal, must be harmo- 
nious. All disease must be — and can only be — healed 



NO AND YES 5 

on this basis. All true Christian Scientists are vindicat- 
ing, fearlessly and honestly, the Principle of this grand 
verity of Mind-healing. 

In erring mortal thought the reality of Truth has an 
antipode, — the reality of error; and disease is one of the 
severe realities of this error. God has no opposite in 
Science. To Truth there is no error. As Truth alone is 
real, then it follows that to declare error real would be to 
make it Truth. Disease arises from a false and material 
sense, from the belief that matter has sensation. There- 
fore this material sense, which is untrue, is of necessity 
unreal. Moreover, this unreal sense substitutes for Truth 
an unreal belief, — namely, that life and health are inde- 
pendent of God, and dependent on material conditions. 
Material sense also avers that Spirit, or Truth, cannot 
restore health and perpetuate life, but that material con- 
ditions can and do destroy both human health and life. 

If disease is as real as health, and is itself a state of 
being, and yet is arrayed against being, then Mind, or 
God, does not meddle with it. Disease becomes indeed a 
stubborn reality, and man is mortal. A " kingdom divided 
against itself is brought to desolation;" therefore the mind 
that attacks a normal and real condition of man, is pro- 
fanely tampering with the realities of God and His laws. 
Metaphysical healing is a lost jewel in this misconception 
of reality. Any contradictory fusion of Truth with error, 
in both theory and practice, prevents one from healing 
scientifically, and makes the last state of one's patients 



6 NO AND YES 

worse than the first. If disease is real it is not illusive, 
and it certainly would contradict the Science of Mind- 
healing to attempt to destroy the realities of Mind in order 
to heal the sick. 

On the theory that God's formations are spiritual, har- 
monious, and eternal, and that God is the only creator, 
Christian Science refutes the validity of the testimony of 
the senses, which take cognizance of their own phenomena, 
— sickness, disease, and death. This refutation is indis- 
pensable to the destruction of false evidence, and the 
consequent cure of the sick, — as all understand who 
practise the true Science of Mind-healing. If, as the 
error indicates, the evidence of disease is not false, then 
disease cannot be healed by denying its validity; and this 
is why the mistaken healer is not successful, trying to heal 
on a material basis. 

The evidence that the earth is motionless and the sun 
revolves around our planet, is as sensible and real as the 
evidence for disease; but Science determines the evidence 
in both cases to be unreal. To material sense it is plain 
also that the error of the revolution of the sun around the 
earth is more apparent than the adverse but true Science 
of the stellar universe. Copernicus has shown that what 
appears real, to material sense and feeling, is absolutely 
unreal. Astronomy, optics, acoustics, and hydraulics are 
all at war with the testimony of the physical senses. This 
fact intimates that the laws of Science are mental, not 
material; and Christian Science demonstrates this. 



NO AND YES 



Science of Mind-healing 

The rule of divinity is golden; to be wise and true re- 
joices every heart. But evil influences waver the scales 
of justice and mercy. No personal considerations should 
allow any root of bitterness to spring up between Chris- 
tian Scientists, nor cause any misapprehension as to the 
motives of others. We must love our enemies, and con- 
tinue to do so unto the end. By the love of God we can 
cancel error in our own hearts, and blot it out of others. 

Sooner or later the eyes of sinful mortals must be opened 
to see every error they possess, and the way out of it; and 
they will "flee as a bird to your mountain," away from 
the enemy of sinning sense, stubborn will, and every im- 
perfection in the land of Sodom, and find rescue and refuge 
in Truth and Love. 

Every loving sacrifice for the good of others is known 
to God, and the wrath of man cannot hide it from Him. 
God has appointed for Christian Scientists high tasks, 
and will not release them from the strict performance of 
each one of them. The students must now fight their 
own battles. I recommend that Scientists draw no lines 
whatever between one person and another, but think, 
speak, teach, and write the truth of Christian Science 
without reference to right or wrong personality in this 
field of labor. Leave the distinctions of individual char- 
acter and the discriminations and guidance thereof to 



8 NO AND YES 

the Father, whose wisdom is unerring and whose love is 
universal. 

We should endeavor to be long-suffering, faithful, and 
charitable with all. To this small effort let us add one 
more privilege — namely, silence whenever it can substi- 
tute censure. Avoid voicing error; but utter the truth of 
God and the beauty of holiness, the joy of Love and "the 
peace of God, that passeth all understanding/' recom- 
mending to all men fellowship in the bonds of Christ. 
Advise students to rebuke each other always in love, as 
I have rebuked them. Having discharged this duty, coun- 
sel each other to work out his own salvation, without fear 
or doubt, knowing that God will make the wrath of man 
to praise Him, and that the remainder thereof He will 
restrain. We can rejoice that every germ of goodness will 
at last struggle into freedom and greatness, and every sin 
will so punish itself that it will bow down to the command- 
ments of Christ, — Truth and Love. 

I enjoin it upon my students to hold no controversy or 
enmity over doctrines and traditions, or over the miscon- 
ceptions of Christian Science, but to work, watch, and 
pray for the amelioration of sin, sickness, and death. If 
one be found who is too blind for instruction, no longer cast 
your pearls before this state of mortal mind, lest it turn 
and rend you; but quietly, with benediction and hope, 
let the unwise pass by, while you walk on in equanimity, 
and with increased power, patience, and understanding, 
gained from your forbearance. This counsel is not new, 



NO AND YES 9 

as my Christian students can testify; and if it had been 
heeded in times past it would have prevented, to a great 
extent, the factions which have sprung up among Scientists 
to the hindrance of the Cause of Truth. It is true that the 
mistakes, prejudices, and errors of one class of thinkers 
must not be introduced or established among another class 
who are clearer and more conscientious in their convic- 
tions; but this one thing can be done, and should be: let 
your opponents alone, and use no influence to prevent 
their legitimate action from their own standpoint of ex- 
perience, knowing, as you should, that God will well 
regenerate and separate wisely and finally; whereas you 
may err in effort, and lose your fruition. 

Hoping to pacify repeated complaints and murmurings 
against too great leniency, on my part, towards some of 
my students who fall into error, I have opposed occa- 
sionally and strongly — especially in the first edition of 
this little work — existing wrongs of the nature referred 
to. But I now point steadfastly to the power of grace to 
overcome evil with good. God will "furnish a table in 
the wilderness" and show the power of Love. 

Science is not the shibboleth of a sect or the caba- 
listic insignia of philosophy; it excludes all error and 
includes all Truth. More mistakes are made in its name 
than this period comprehends. Divinely defined, Science 
is the atmosphere of God; humanly construed, and ac- 
cording to Webster, it is "knowledge, duly arranged and 
referred to general truths and principles on which it is 



10 NO AND YES 

founded, and from which it is derived/' I employ this 
awe-filled word in both a divine and human sense; but 
I insist that Christian Science is demonstrably as true, 
relative to the unseen verities of being, as any proof that 
can be given of the completeness of Science. 

The two largest words in the vocabulary of thought are 
"Christian" and "Science." The former is the highest 
style of man; the latter reveals and interprets God and 
man; it aggregates, amplifies, unfolds, and expresses the 
ALL-God. The life of Christ is the predicate and postu- 
late of all that I teach, and there is but one standard 
statement, one rule, and one Principle for all scientific 
truth. 

My hygienic system rests on Mind, the eternal Truth. 
What is termed matter, or relates to its so-called attributes, 
is a self-destroying error. When a so-called material sense 
is lost, and Truth restores that lost sense, — on the basis 
that all consciousness is Mind and eternal, — the former 
position, that sense is organic and material, is proven 
erroneous. 

The feasibility and immobility of Christian Science 
unveil the true idea, — namely, that earth's discords have 
not the reality of Mind in the Science of being; and this 
idea — dematerializing and spiritualizing mortals — turns 
like the needle to the pole all hope and faith to God, based 
as it is on His omnipotence and omnipresence. 

Eternal harmony, perpetuity, and perfection, constitute 
the phenomena of being, governed by the immutable and 



NO AND YES 11 

eternal laws of God; whereas matter and human will, 
intellect, desire, and fear, are not the creators, controllers, 
nor destroyers of life or its harmonies. Man has an im- 
mortal Soul, a divine Principle, and an eternal being. 
Man has perpetual individuality; and God's laws, and 
their intelligent and harmonious action, constitute his in- 
dividuality in the Science of Soul. 

In its literary expression, my system of Christian meta- 
physics is hampered by material terms, which must be 
used to indicate thoughts that are to be understood meta- 
physically. As a Science, this system is held back by the 
common ignorance of what it is and what it does, and 
(worse still) by those who come falsely in its name. To 
be appreciated, Science must be understood and consci- 
entiously introduced. If the Bible and Science and Health 
had the place in schools of learning that physiology oc- 
cupies, they would revolutionize and reform the world, 
through the power of Christ. It is true that it requires 
more study to understand and demonstrate what these 
works teach, than to learn theology, physiology, or physics; 
because they teach divine Science, with fixed Principle, 
given rule, and unmistakable proof. 

Ancient and modern human philosophy are inadequate 
to grasp the Principle of Christian Science, or to demon- 
strate it. Revelation shows this Principle, and will rescue 
reason from the thrall of error. Revelation must subdue 
the sophistry of intellect, and spiritualize consciousness 
with the dictum and the demonstration of Truth and Love. 



12 NO AND YES 

Christian Science Mind-healing can only be gained by 
working from a purely Christian standpoint. Then it 
heals the sick and exalts the race. The essence of this 
Science is right thinking and right acting — leading us to 
see spirituality and to be spiritual, to understand and to 
demonstrate God. 

The Massachusetts Metaphysical College and Church 
of Christ, Scientist, in Boston, were the outgrowth of the 
author's religious experience. After a lifetime of ortho- 
doxy on the platform of doctrines, rites, and ceremonies, 
it became a sacred duty for her to impart to others this 
new-old knowledge of God. 

The same affection, desire, and motives which have stim- 
ulated true Christianity in all ages, and given impulse to 
goodness, in or out of the Church, have nerved her pur- 
pose to build on the new-born conception of the Christ, as 
Jesus declared himself, — namely, "the way, the truth, 
and the life." Living a true life, casting out evil, healing 
the sick, and preaching the gospel of Truth, — these are 
the ends of Christianity. This divine way impels a spirit- 
ualization of thought and method, beyond doctrine and 
ritual; and in nothing else has she departed from the old 
landmarks. 

The unveiled spiritual signification of the Word so en- 
larges our sense of God that it makes both sense and Soul, 
man and Life, immaterial, though still individual. It re- 
moves all limits from divine power. God must be found 
all instead of a part of being, and man the reflection of 



NO AND YES 13 

His power and goodness. This Science rebukes sin with 
its own nothingness, and thus destroys sin quickly and 
utterly. It makes disease unreal, and this heals it. 

The demonstration of moral and physical growth, and a 
scientific deduction from the Principle of all harmony, de- 
clare both the Principle and idea to be divine. If this be 
true, then death must be swallowed up in Life, and the 
prophecy of Jesus fulfilled, "Whosoever liveth and be- 
lieveth in me shall never die." Though centuries passed 
after those words were originally uttered, before this re- 
appearing of Truth, and though the hiatus be longer still 
before that saying is demonstrated in Life that knows no 
death, the declaration is nevertheless true, and remains 
a clear and profound deduction from Christian Science. 

Is Christian Science of the Same Lineage as 
Spiritualism or Theosophy? 

Science is not susceptible of being held as a mere theory. 
It is hoary with time. It takes hold of eternity, voices the 
infinite, and governs the universe. No greater opposites 
can be conceived of, physically, morally, and spiritually, 
than Christian Science, spiritualism, and theosophy. 

Science and Health has effected a revolution in the 
minds of thinkers on the subject of mediumship, and given 
impulse to reason and revelation, goodness and virtue. A 
theory may be sound in spots, and sparkle like a diamond, 
while other parts of it have no lustre. Christian Science 



14 NO AND YES 

is sound in every part. It is neither warped nor miscon- 
ceived, when properly demonstrated. If a spiritualist 
medium understood the Science of Mind-healing, he 
would know that between those who have and those who 
have not passed the transition called death, there can be 
no interchange of consciousness, and that all sensible phe- 
nomena are merely subjective states of mortal mind. 

Theosophy is a corruption of Judaism. This corruption 
had a renewal in the Neoplatonic philosophy; but it sprang 
from the Oriental philosophy of Brahmanism, and blends 
with its magic and enchantments. Theosophy is no more 
allied to Christian Science than the odor of the upas-tree 
is to the sweet breath of springtide, or the brilliant cor- 
uscations of the northern sky are to solar heat and 
light. 

Is Christian Science from Beneath, and not 
from Above? 

Hear the words of our Master: "Go ye into all the 
world"! "Heal the sick, cast out devils"! Christian 
Scientists, perhaps more than any other religious sect, are 
obeying these commands; and the injunctions are not 
confined to Jesus' students in that age, but they extend 
to this age, — to as many as shall believe on him. The 
demand and example of Jesus were not from beneath. 
Are frozen dogmas, persistent persecution, and the doc- 
trine of eternal damnation, from above? Are the dews 



NO AND YES 15 

of divine Truth, falling on the sick and sinner, to heal 
them, from beneath? "By their fruits ye shall know 
them." 

Reading my books, without prejudice, would convince 
all that their purpose is right. The comprehension of my 
teachings would enable any one to prove these books to 
be filled with blessings for the whole human family. Fa- 
tiguing Bible translations and voluminous commentaries 
are employed to explain and prop old creeds, and they 
have the civil and religious arms in their defense; then 
why should not these be equally extended to support the 
Christianity that heals the sick? The notions of person- 
ality to be found in creeds are far more mystic than 
Mind-healing. It is no easy matter to believe there are 
three persons in one person, and that one person is cast 
out of another person. These conceptions of Deity and 
devil presuppose an impotent God and an incredible 
Satan. 

Is Christian Science Pantheistic? 

Christian Science refutes pantheism, finds Spirit neither 
in matter nor in the modes of mortal mind. It shows 
that matter and mortal mind have neither origin nor ex- 
istence in the eternal Mind. Thinking otherwise is what 
estranges mortals from divine Life and Love. God is 
All-in-all. He is Spirit; and in nothing is He unlike Him- 
self. Nothing that "worketh or maketh a lie" is to be 



16 NO AND YES 

found in the divine consciousness. For God to know, 
is to be; that is, what He knows must truly and eternally 
exist. If He knows matter, and matter can exist in Mind, 
then mortality and discord must be eternal. He is Mind; 
and whatever He knows is made manifest, and must be 
Truth. 

If God knows evil even as a false claim, this knowledge 
would manifest evil in Him and proceeding from Him. 
Christian Science shows that matter, evil, sin, sickness, and 
death are but negations of Spirit, Truth, and Life, which 
are positives that cannot be gainsaid. The subjective 
states of evil, called mortal mind or matter, are negatives 
destitute of time and space; for there is none beside God 
or Spirit and the idea of Spirit. 

This infinite logic is the infinite light, — uncompre- 
hended, yet forever giving forth more light, because it 
has no darkness to emit. Mortals do not understand the 
All; hence their inference of some other existence beside 
God and His true likeness, — of something unlike Him. 
He who is All, understands all. He can have no knowl- 
edge or inference but His own consciousness, and can take 
in no more than all. 

The mists of matter — sin, sickness, and death — dis- 
appear in proportion as mortals approach Spirit, which 
is the reality of being. It is not enough to say that matter 
is the substratum of evil, and that its highest attenuation is 
mortal mind; for there is, strictly speaking, no mortal 
mind. Mind is immortal. Death is the consequent of an 



NO AND YES 17 

antecedent false assumption of the realness of something 
unreal, material, and mortal. If God knows the antece- 
dent, He must produce its consequences. From this logic 
there is no escape. Matter, or evil, is the absence of Spirit 
or good. Their nothingness is thus proven; for God is 
good, ever-present, and All. 

"In Him we live, and move, and have our being;" con- 
sequently it is impossible for the true man — who is a 
spiritual and individual being, created in the eternal 
Science of being — to be conscious of aught but good. 
God's image and likeness can never be less than a good 
man; and for man to be more than God's likeness is 
impossible. Man is the climax of creation; and God is 
not without an ever-present witness, testifying of Himself. 
Matter, or any mode of mortal mind, is neither part nor 
parcel of divine consciousness and God's verity. 

In Science there is no fallen state of being; for therein 
is no inverted image of God, no escape from the focal 
radiation of the infinite. Hence the unreality of error, 
and the truth of the Scripture, that there is " none beside 
Him." If mortals could grasp these two words all and 
nothing, this mystery of a God who has no knowledge of 
sin would disappear, and the eternal, infinite harmony 
would be fathomed. If God could know a false claim, 
false knowledge would be a part of His consciousness. 
Then evil would be as real as good, sickness as real as 
health, death as real as Life; and sickness, sin, and death 
would be as eternal as God. 



18 NO AND YES 



Is Christian Science Blasphemous? 

Blasphemy has never diminished sin and sickness, nor 
acknowledged God in all His ways. Blasphemy rebukes 
not the godless lie that denies Him as All-in-all, nor does 
it ascribe to Him all presence, power, and glory. Chris- 
tian Science does this. If Science lacked the proof of its 
origin in God, it would be self-destructive, for it rests alone 
on the demonstration of God's supremacy and omnipo- 
tence. Right thinking and right acting, physical and 
moral harmony, come with Science, and the secret of 
its presence lies in the universal need of better health and 
morals. 

Human theories, when weighed in the balance, are 
found unequal to the demonstration of divine Life and 
Love; and their highest endeavors are, to divine Science, 
what a child's love of pictures is to art. A child, in his 
ignorance, may imagine the face of Dante to be the rapt 
face of Jesus. Thus falsely may the human conceive of 
the Divine. If the schoolmaster is not Christ, the school 
gets things wrong, and knows it not; but the teacher is 
morally responsible. 

Good health and a more spiritual religion are the com- 
mon wants; and these wants have wrought this moral 
result, — that the so-called mortal mind asks for what 
Mind alone can supply. This demand militates against 
the so-called demands of matter, and regulates the present 



NO AND YES 19 

high premium on Mind-healing. If the uniform moral 
and spiritual, as well as physical, effects of Christian Sci- 
ence were lacking, the premium would go down. That 
it continues to rise, and the demand to increase, shows its 
real value to the race. Even doctors will agree that in- 
fidelity, ignorance, and quackery have never met the grow- 
ing wants of humanity. Christian Science is no "Boston 
craze ;" it is the sober second thought of advancing 
humanity. 

Is There a Personal Deity? 

God is infinite. He is neither a limited mind nor a 
limited body. God is Love; and Love is Principle, not 
person. What the person of the infinite is, we know not; 
but we are gratefully and lovingly conscious of the f ather- 
liness of this Supreme Being. God is individual, and man 
is His individualized idea. While material man and the 
physical senses receive no spiritual idea, and feel no sen- 
sation of divine Love, spiritual man and his spiritual 
senses are drinking in the nature and essence of the indi- 
vidual infinite. A sinful sense is incompetent to understand 
the realities of being, — that Life is God, and that man 
is in His image and likeness. A sinner can take no cog- 
nizance of the noumenon or the phenomena of Spirit; 
but leaving sin, sense rises to the fulness of the stature of 
man in Christ. 

Person is formed after the manner of mortal man, so 



20 NO AND YES 

far as he can conceive of personality. Limitless person- 
ality is inconceivable. His person and perfection are 
neither self-created, nor discerned through imperfection; 
and of God as a person, human reason, imagination, and 
revelation give us no knowledge. Error would fashion 
Deity in a manlike mould, while Truth is moulding a 
Godlike man. 

When the term divine Principle is used to signify Deity 
it may seem distant or cold, until better apprehended. 
This Principle is Mind, substance, Life, Truth, Love. 
When understood, Principle is found to be the only term 
that fully conveys the ideas of God, — one Mind, a perfect 
man, and divine Science. As the divine Principle is com- 
prehended, God's omnipotence and omnipresence will 
dawn on mortals, and the notion of an everywhere-present 
body — or of an infinite Mind starting from a finite body, 
and returning to it — will disappear. 

Ever-present Love must seem ever absent to ever-present 
selfishness or material sense. Hence this asking amiss 
and receiving not, and the common idolatry of man- 
worship. In divine Science, God is recognized as the 
only power, presence, and glory. 

Adam's mistiness and Satan's reasoning, ever since the 
flood, — when specimens of every kind emerged from the 
ark, — have run through the veins of all human philoso- 
phy. Human reason is a blind guide, a continued series 
of mortal hypotheses, antagonistic to Revelation and Sci- 
ence. It is continually straying into forbidden by-paths 



NO AND YES 21 

of sensualism, contrary to the life and teachings of Jesus 
and Paul, and the vision of the Apocalypse. Human 
philosophy has ninety-nine parts of error to the one- 
hundredth part of Truth, — an unsafe decoction for the 
race. The Science that Jesus demonstrated, whose views 
of Truth Confucius and Plato but dimly discerned, Science 
and Health interprets. It was not a search after wisdom; 
it was wisdom, and it grasped in spiritual law the uni- 
verse, — all time, space, immortality, thought, extension. 
This Science demonstrated the Principle of all phenomena, 
identity, individuality, law; and showed man as reflect- 
ing God and the divine capacity. Human philosophy 
would dethrone perfection, and substitute matter and evil 
for divine means and ends. 

Human philosophy has an undeveloped God, who un- 
folds Himself through material modes, wherein the human 
and divine mingle in the same realm and consciousness. 
This is rank infidelity; because by it we lose God's ways 
and perpetuate the supposed power and reality of evil ad 
infinitum. Christian Science rends this veil in the pantheon 
of many gods, and reproduces the teachings of Jesus, whose 
philosophy is incontestable, bears the strain of time, and 
brings in the glories of eternity; "for other foundation 
can no man lay than that is laid, which is Jesus Christ." 

Divine philosophy is demonstrably the true idea of the 
Christ, wherein Principle heals and saves. A philosophy 
which cannot heal the sick has little resemblance to Sci- 
ence, and is, to say the least, like a cloud without rain, 



22 NO AND YES 

"driven about by every wind of doctrine." Such phi- 
losophy has certainly not touched the hem of the Christ 
garment. 

Leibnitz, Descartes, Fichte, Hegel, Spinoza, Bishop 
Berkeley, were once clothed with a "brief authority ;" 
but Berkeley ended his metaphysical theory with a treatise 
on the healing properties of tar-water, and Hegel was an 
inveterate snuff -taker. The circumlocution and cold cate- 
gories of Kant fail to improve the conditions of mortals, 
morally, spiritually, or physically. Such miscalled meta- 
physical systems are reeds shaken by the wind. Com- 
pared with the inspired wisdom and infinite meaning of 
the Word of Truth, they are as moonbeams to the sun, or 
as Stygian night to the kindling dawn. 

Is There a Personal Devil? 

No man hath seen the person of good or of evil. Each 
is greater than the corporeality we behold. 

"He cast out devils ." This record shows that the term 
devil is generic, being used in the plural number. From 
this it follows that there is more than one devil. That 
Jesus cast several persons out of another person, is not 
stated, and is impossible. Hence the passage must refer 
to the evils which were cast out. 

Jesus defined devil as a mortal who is full of evil. " Have 
I not chosen you twelve, and one of you is a devil?" His 
definition of evil indicated his ability to cast it out. An 



NO AND YES 23 

incorrect concept of the nature of evil hinders the destruc- 
tion of evil. To conceive of God as resembling — in per- 
sonality, or form — the personality that Jesus condemned 
as devilish, is fraught with spiritual danger. Evil can 
neither grasp the prerogative of God nor make evil om- 
nipotent and omnipresent. 

Jesus said to Peter, "Get thee behind me, Satan;" but 
he to whom our Lord gave the keys of the kingdom could 
not have been wholly evil, and therefore was not a devil, 
after the accepted definition. Out of the Magdalen, Jesus 
cast seven devils; but not one person was named among 
them. According to Crabtree, these devils were the dis- 
eases Jesus cast out. 

The most eminent divines, in Europe and America, con- 
cede that the Scriptures have both a literal and a moral 
meaning. Which of the two is the more important to gain, 
— the literal or the moral sense of the word devil, — in 
order to cast out this devil? Evil is a quality, not an 
individual. 

As mortals, we need to discern the claims of evil, and to 
fight these claims, not as realities, but as illusions; but 
Deity can have no such warfare against Himself. Knowl- 
edge of a man's physical personality is not sufficient to 
inform us as to the amount of good or evil he possesses. 
Hence we cannot understand God or man, through the 
person of either. God is All-in-all; but He is definite and 
individual, the omnipresent and omniscient Mind; and 
man's individuality is God's own image and likeness, — 



24 NO AND YES 

even the immeasurable idea of divine Mind. In the 
Science of good, evil loses all place, person, and power. 

According to Spinoza's philosophy God is amplification. 
He is in all things, and therefore He is in evil in human 
thought. He is extension, of whatever character. Also, 
according to Spinoza, man is an animal vegetable, devel- 
oped through the lower orders of matter and mortal mind. 
All these vagaries are at variance with my system of meta- 
physics, which rests on God as One and All, and denies 
the actual existence of both matter and evil. According to 
false philosophy and scholastic theology, God is three 
persons in one person. By the same token, evil is not only 
as real as good, but much more real, since evil subordi- 
nates good in personality. 

The claims of evil become both less and more in Chris- 
tian Science, than in human philosophies or creeds : more, 
because the evil that is hidden by dogma and human rea- 
son is uncovered by Science; and less, because evil, being 
thus uncovered, is found out, and exposure is nine points 
of destruction. Then appears the grand verity of Chris- 
tian Science: namely, that evil has no claims and was 
never a claimant; for behold evil (or devil) is, as Jesus 
said, " a murderer from the beginning, and the truth abode 
not in him." 

There was never a moment in which evil was real. This 
great fact concerning all error brings with it another and 
more glorious truth, that good is supreme. As there is 
none beside Him, and He is all good, there can be no evil. 



NO AND YES 25 

Simply uttering this great thought is not enough! We 
must live it, until God becomes the All and Only of our 
being. Having won through great tribulation this cardinal 
point of divine Science, St. Paul said, "But now we are 
delivered from the law, that being dead wherein we were 
held; that we should serve in newness of spirit, and not 
in the oldness of the letter/' 

Is Man a Person? 

Man is more than physical personality, or what we cog- 
nize through the material senses. Mind is more than mat- 
ter, even as the infinite idea of Truth is beyond a finite 
belief. Man outlives finite mortal definitions of himself, 
according to a law of "the survival of the fittest/' Man is 
the eternal idea of his divine Principle, or Father. He is 
neither matter nor a mode of mortal mind, for he is spir- 
itual and eternal, an immortal mode of the divine Mind. 
Man is the image and likeness of God, coexistent and 
coeternal with him. 

Man is not absorbed in Deity; for he is forever individ- 
ual; but what this everlasting individuality is, remains to 
be learned. Mortals have not seen it. That which is born 
of the flesh is not man's eternal identity. Spiritual and 
immortal man alone is God's likeness, and that whidi is 
mortal is not man in a spiritually scientific sense. A 
material, sinful mortal is but the counterfeit of immortal 
man. 



26 NO AND YES 

The mind-quacks believe that mortal man is identical 
with immortal man, and that the immortal is inside the 
mortal; that good and evil blend; that matter and Spirit 
are one; and that Soul, or Spirit, is subdivided into spirits, 
or souls, — alias gods. This infantile talk about Mind- 
healing is no more identical with Christian Science than 
the babe is identical with the adult, or the human belief 
resembles the divine idea. Hence it is impossible for those 
holding such material and mortal views to demonstrate 
my metaphysics. Theirs is the sensuous thought, which 
brings forth its own sensuous conception. Mine is the 
SDiritual idea which transfigures thought. 

All real being represents God, and is in Him. In this 
Science of being, man can no more relapse or collapse 
from perfection, than his divine Principle, or Father, can 
fall out of Himself into something below infinitude. Man's 
real ego, or selfhood, is goodness. If man's individuality 
were evil, he would be annihilated, for evil is self-destroying. 

Man's individual being must reflect the supreme indi- 
vidual Being, to be His image and likeness; and this 
individuality never originated in molecule, corpuscle, ma- 
teriality, or mortality. God holds man in the eternal 
bonds of Science, — in the immutable harmony of divine 
law. Man is a celestial; and in the spiritual universe 
he is forever individual and forever harmonious. "If 
God so clothe the grass of the field, . . . shall He not 
much more clothe you, ye of little faith? " 

Sin must be obsolete, — dust returning to dust, noth- 



NO AND YES 27 

ingness to nothingness. Sin is not Mind; it is but the sup- 
position that there is more than one Mind. It issues 
a false claim; and the claim, being worthless, is in reality 
no claim whatever. Matter is not Mind, to claim aught; 
but Mind is God, and evil finds no place in good. When 
we get near enough to God to see this, the springtide 
of Truth in Christian Science will burst upon us in the 
similitude of the Apocalyptic pictures. No night will be 
there, and there will be no more sea. There will be no 
need of the sun, for Spirit will be the light of the city, and 
matter will be proved a myth. Until centuries pass, and 
this vision of Truth is fully interpreted by divine Science, 
this prophecy will be scoffed at; but it is just as veritable 
now as it can be then. Science, divine Science, presents 
the grand and eternal verities of God and man as the 
divine Mind and that Mind's idea. 

Mortal man is the antipode of immortal man, and the 
two should not be confounded. Bishop Foster said, in a 
lecture in Boston, "No man living hath yet seen man." 
This material sinful personality, which we misname man, 
is what St. Paul terms "the old man and his deeds," to 
be "put off." 

Who can say what the absolute personality of God or 
man is? Who living hath seen God or a perfect man? 
In presence of such thoughts take off thy shoes and 
tread lightly, for this is holy ground. Surely the probation 
of mortals must go on after the change called death, that 
they may learn the definition of immortal being; or else 



28 NO AND YES 

their present mistakes would extinguish human existence. 
How long this false sense remains after the transition called 
death, no mortal knoweth; but this is sure, that the mists 
of error, sooner or later, will melt in the fervent heat of 
suffering, mortality will burst the barriers of sense, and 
man be found perfect and eternal. Of his intermediate 
conditions — the purifying processes and terrible revolu- 
tions necessary to effect this end — I am ignorant. 

Inasmuch as these momentous facts in the Science of 
being must be learned some time, now is the most accept- 
able time for beginning the lesson. If Science is pointing 
the way, and is found to bring with it health, holiness, and 
immortality, then to-day is none too soon for entering this 
path. The proof that Christian Science is the way of sal- 
vation given by Christ, I consider well established. The 
present, as well as the future, reveals the fact that Truth 
is never understood too soon. 

Has Truth, as demonstrated by Jesus, reappeared? 
Study Christian Science and practise it, and you will 
know that Truth has reappeared. What is demonstrably 
true cannot be gainsaid; but getting the letter and omitting 
the spirit of this Science is neither the comprehension of 
its Principle nor the practice of its Life. 

Has Man a Soul? 

The Scriptures inform us that "the soul that sinneth, 
it shall die." Here soul means sense and organic life; and 



NO AND YES 29 

this passage refers to the Jewish law, that a mortal should 
be put to death for his own sin, but not for another's. 
Not Soul, but mortal sense, sins and dies. Immortal man 
has immortal Soul and a deathless sense of being. Mortal 
man has but a false sense of Soul and body. He believes 
that Spirit, or Soul, exists in matter. This is pantheism, 
and is not the Science of Soul. The mind-quacks have 
so slight a knowledge of Soul that they believe material 
and sinning sense to be soul; and then they doctor this 
soul as if it were not even a material sense. 

In Dr. Gordon's sermon on The Ministry of Healing, 
he said, "The forgiven soul in a sick body is not half a 
man." Is this pantheistic statement sound theology, — 
that Soul is in matter, and the immortal part of man a sin- 
ner? Is not this a disparagement of the person of man and 
a denial of God's power? Better far that we impute such 
doctrines to mortal opinion than to the divine Word. 

To my sense, such a statement is a shocking reflection 
on the divine power. A mortal pardoned by God is not 
sick, he is made whole. He in whom sin, disease, and 
death are destroyed, is more than a fraction of himself. 
Such sermons, though clad in soft raiment, are spirit- 
less waifs, literary driftwood on the ocean of thought; 
while Truth walks triumphantly over the waves of sin 
sickness, and death. 



30 NO AND YES 



Is Sin Forgiven? 

The law of Life and Truth is the law of Christ, destroy- 
ing all sense of sin and death. It does more than forgive 
the false sense named sin, for it pursues and punishes it, 
and will not let sin go until it is destroyed, — until nothing 
is left to be forgiven, to suffer, or to be punished. For- 
given thus, sickness and sin have no relapse. God's law 
reaches and destroys evil by virtue of the allness of God. 

He need not know the evil He destroys, any more than 
the legislator need know the criminal who is punished by 
the law enacted. God's law is in three words, " I am All; " 
and this perfect law is ever present to rebuke any claim 
of another law. God pities our woes with the love of a 
Father for His child, — not by becoming human, and 
knowing sin, or naught, but by removing our knowledge 
of what is not. He could not destroy our woes totally 
if He possessed any knowledge of them. His sympathy 
is divine, not human. It is Truth's knowledge of its own 
infinitude which forbids the genuine existence of even 
a claim to error. This knowledge is light wherein there 
is no darkness, — not light holding darkness within itself. 
The consciousness of light is like the eternal law of God, 
revealing Him and nothing else. 

Sympathy with sin, sorrow, and sickness would dethrone 
God as Truth, for Truth has no sympathy for error. In 
Science, the cure of the sick demonstrates this grand 



NO AND YES 31 

verity of Christian Science, that you cannot eradicate dis- 
ease if you admit that God sends it or sees it. Material 
and mortal mind-healing (so-called) has for ages been 
a pretender, but has not healed mortals; and they are 
yet sick and sinful. 

Disease and sin appear to-day in subtler forms than 
they did yesterday. They progress and will multiply into 
worse forms, until it is understood that disease and sin are 
unreal, unknown to Truth, and never actual persons or 
real facts. 

Our phraseology varies. To me divine pardon is that 
divine presence which is the sure destruction of sin; and 
I insist on the destruction of sin as the only full proof of 
its pardon. " For this purpose the Son of God was mani- 
fested, that he might destroy the works of the devil" 
(1 John hi. 8). 

Jesus cast out evils, mediating between what is and is 
not, until a perfect consciousness is attained. He healed 
disease as he healed sin; but he treated them both, 
not as in or of matter, but as mortal beliefs to be 
exterminated. Physical and mental healing were one 
and the same with this master Metaphysician. If the 
evils called sin, sickness, and death had been forgiven 
in the generally accepted sense, they would have returned, 
to be again forgiven; but Jesus said to disease: "Come 
out of him, and enter no more into him." He said also: 
"If a man keep my saying, he shall never see death;" 
and "Whatsoever thou shalt bind on earth shall be bound 



32 NO AND YES 

in heaven." The misinterpretation of such passages has 
retarded the progress of Christianity and the spirituali- 
zation of the race. 

A magistrate's pardon may encourage a criminal to 
repeat the offense; because forgiveness, in the popular 
sense of the word, can neither extinguish a crime nor the 
motives leading to it. The belief in sin — its pleasure, 
pain, or power — must suffer, until it is self -destroyed. 
"Whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap." 

Is There any such Thing as Sin? 

Frequently when I touch this subject my meaning is 
ignorantly or maliciously misconstrued. Christian Science 
Mind-healing lifts with a steady arm, and cleaves sin with 
a broad battle-axe. It gives the lie to sin, in the spirit of 
Truth; but other theories make sin true. Jesus declared 
that the devil was "a liar, and the father of it." A lie is 
negation, — alias nothing, or the opposite of something. 
Good is great and real. Hence its opposite, named evil, 
must be small and unreal. When this sense is attained, 
we shall no longer be the servants of sin, and shall cease 
to love it. 

The domination of good destroys the sense of evil. To 
illustrate: It seems a great evil to belie and belittle Chris- 
tian Science, and persecute a Cause which is healing its 
thousands and rapidly diminishing the percentage of sin. 
But reduce this evil to its lowest terms, nothing, and slander 



NO AND YES 33 

loses its power to harm; for even the wrath of man shall 
praise Him. The reduction of evil, in Science, gives the 
dominance to God, and must lead us to bless those who 
curse, that thus we may overcome evil with good. 

If the Bible and my work Science and Health had their 
rightful place in schools of learning, they would revolu- 
tionize the world by advancing the kingdom of Christ. 
It requires sacrifice, struggle, prayer, and watchfulness 
to understand and demonstrate what these volumes teach, 
because they involve divine Science, with fixed Principle, 
a given rule, and unmistakable proof. 

Is There no Sacrificial Atonement? 

Self-sacrifice is the highway to heaven. The sacri- 
fice of our blessed Lord is undeniable, and it was a million 
times greater than the brief agony of the cross; for that 
would have been insufficient to insure the glory his sacri- 
fice brought and the good it wrought. The spilling of 
human blood was inadequate to represent the blood of 
Christ, the outpouring love that sustains man's at-one- 
ment with God; though shedding human blood brought 
to light the efficacy of divine Life and Love and its power 
over death. Jesus' sacrifice stands preeminently amidst 
physical suffering and human woe. The glory of human 
life is in overcoming sickness, sin, and death. Jesus suf- 
fered for all mortals to bring in this glory; and his pur- 
pose was to show them that the way out of the flesh, out 



34 NO AND YES 

of the delusion of all human error, must be through the 
baptism of suffering, leading up to health, harmony, and 
heaven. 

We shall leave the ceremonial law when we gain the 
truer sense of following Christ in spirit, and we shall no 
longer venture to materialize the spiritual and infinite 
meaning and efficacy of Truth and Love, and the sacrifice 
that Jesus made for us, by commemorating his death 
with a material rite. Jesus said: "The hour cometh, and 
now is, when the true worshippers shall worship the Father 
in spirit and in truth." They drink the cup of Christ and 
are baptized in the purification of persecution who discern 
his true merit, — the unseen glory of suffering for others. 
Physical torture affords but a slight illustration of the 
pangs which come to one upon whom the world of sense 
falls with its leaden weight in the endeavor to crush out 
of a career its divine destiny. 

The blood of Christ speaketh better things than that 
of Abel. The real atonement — so infinitely beyond the 
heathen conception that God requires human blood to 
propitiate His justice and bring His mercy — needs to be 
understood. The real blood or Life of Spirit is not yet 
discerned. Love bruised and bleeding, yet mounting to 
the throne of glory in purity and peace, over the steps of 
uplifted humanity, — this is the deep significance of the 
blood of Christ. Nameless woe, everlasting victories, are 
the blood, the vital currents of Christ Jesus' life, purchas- 
ing the freedom of mortals from sin and death. 



NO AND YES 35 

This blood of Jesus is everything to human hope and 
faith. Without it, how poor the precedents of Christian- 
ity! What manner of Science were Christian Science 
without the power to demonstrate the Principle of such 
Life; and what hope have mortals but through deep hu- 
mility and adoration to reach the understanding of this 
Principle! When human struggles cease, and mortals 
yield lovingly to the purpose of divine Love, there will be 
no more sickness, sorrow, sin, and death. He who pointed 
the way of Life conquered also the drear subtlety of death. 

It was not to appease the wrath of God, but to show the 
allness of Love and the nothingness of hate, sin, and death, 
that Jesus suffered. He lived that we also might live. He 
suffered, to show mortals the awful price paid by sin, and 
how to avoid paying it. He atoned for the terrible un- 
reality of a supposed existence apart from God. He 
suffered because of the shocking human idolatry that 
presupposes Life, substance, Soul, and intelligence in 
matter, — which is the antipode of God, and yet governs 
mankind. The glorious truth of being — namely, that 
God is the only Mind, Life, substance, Soul — needs no 
reconciliation with God, for it is one with Him now and 
forever. 

Jesus came announcing Truth, and saying not only "the 
kingdom of God is at hand/' but "the kingdom of God 
is within you." Hence there is no sin, for God's kingdom 
is everywhere and supreme, and it follows that the human 
kingdom is nowhere,, and must be unreal. Jesus taught 



36 NO AND YES 

and demonstrated the infinite as one, and not as two. 
He did not teach that there are two deities, — one in- 
finite and the other finite; for that would be impossible. 
He knew God as infinite, and therefore as the All-in-all; 
and we shall know this truth when we awake in the divine 
likeness. Jesus' true and conscious being never left 
heaven for earth. It abode forever above, even while 
mortals believed it was here. He once spoke of himself 
(John hi. 13) as "the Son of man which is in heaven," — 
remarkable words, as wholly opposed to the popular view 
of Jesus' nature. 

The real Christ was unconscious of matter, of sin, 
disease, and death, and was conscious only of God, of 
good, of eternal Life, and harmony. Hence the human 
Jesus had a resort to his higher self and relation to the 
Father, and there could find rest from unreal trials in 
the conscious reality and royalty of his being, — holding 
the mortal as unreal, and the divine as real. It was this 
retreat from material to spiritual selfhood which recuper- 
ated him for triumph over sin, sickness, and death. Had 
he been as conscious of these evils as he was of God, 
wherein there is no consciousness of human error, Jesus 
could not have resisted them; nor could he have conquered 
the malice of his foes, rolled away the stone from the 
sepulchre, and risen from human sense to a higher con- 
cept than that in which he appeared at his birth. 

Mankind's concept of Jesus was a babe born in a manger, 
even while the divine and ideal Christ was the Son of God, 



NO AND YES 37 

spiritual and eternal. In human conception God's off- 
spring had to grow, develop; but in Science his divine 
nature and manhood were forever complete, and dwelt 
forever in the Father. Jesus said, " Ye do err, not know- 
ing the Scriptures, nor the power of God." Mortal thought 
gives the eternal God and infinite consciousness the license 
of a short-lived sinner, to begin and end, to know both 
evil and good; when evil is temporal and God is eternal, — 
and when, as a sphere of Mind, He cannot know begin- 
ning or end. 

The spiritual interpretation of the vicarious atonement 
of Jesus, in Christian Science, unfolds the full-orbed glory 
of that event; but to regard this wonder of glory, this 
most marvellous demonstration, as a personal and material 
bloodgiving — or as a proof that sin is known to the 
divine Mind, and that what is unlike God demands His 
continual presence, knowledge, and power, to meet and 
master it — would make the atonement to be less than 
the at-one-ment, whereby the work of Jesus would lose 
its efficacy and lack the "signs following." 

From Genesis to Revelation the Scriptures teach an in- 
finite God, and none beside Him; and on this basis 
Messiah and prophet saved the sinner and raised the dead, 
— uplifting the human understanding, buried in a false 
sense of being. Jesus rendered null and void whatever 
is unlike God; but he could not have done this if error 
and sin existed in the Mind of God. What God knows, 
He also predestinates; and it must be fulfilled. Jesus 



38 NO AND YES 

proved to perfection, so far as this could be done in that 
age, what Christian Science is to-day proving in a small 
degree, — the falsity of the evidence of the material senses 
that sin, sickness, and death are sensible claims, and that 
God substantiates their evidence by knowing their claim. 
He established the only true idealism on the basis that God 
is All, and He is good/ and good is Spirit; hence there is 
no intelligent sin, evil mind or matter: and this is the only 
true philosophy and realism. This divine mystery of 
godliness was the rock of Truth, on which he built his 
Church of the new-born, against which the gates of hell 
cannot prevail. 

This Truth is the rock which the builders rejected; but 
"the same is become the head of the corner." This is 
the chief corner-stone, the basis and support of creation, 
the interpreter of one God, the infinity and unity of good. 

In proportion as mortals approximate the understand- 
ing of Christian Science, they take hold of harmony, and 
material incumbrance disappears. Having one God, one 
Mind, one consciousness, — which includes only His own 
nature, — and loving your neighbor as yourself, constitute 
Christian Science, which must demonstrate the nothing- 
ness of any other state or stage of being. 

Is There no Intercessory Prayer? 

All prayer that is desire is intercessory; but kindling 
desire loses a part of its purest spirituality if the lips try to 



NO AND YES 39 

express it. It is a truism that we can think more lucidly 
and profoundly than we can write or speak. The silent 
intercession and unvoiced imploring is an honest and po- 
tent prayer to heal and save. The audible prayer may be 
offered to be heard of men, though ostensibly to catch 
God's ear, — after the fashion of Baal's prophets, — by 
speaking loud enough to be heard; but when the heart 
prays, and not the lips, no dishonesty or vanity influences 
the petition. 

Prophet and apostle have glorified God in secret prayer, 
and He has rewarded them openly. Prayer can neither 
change God, nor bring His designs into mortal modes; but 
it can and does change our modes and our false sense of 
Life, Love, and Truth, uplifting us to Him. Such prayer 
humiliates, purifies, and quickens activity, in the direction 
that is unerring. 

True prayer is not asking God for love; it is learning to 
love, and to include all mankind in one affection. Prayer 
is the utilization of the love wherewith He loves us. Prayer 
begets an awakened desire to be and do good. It makes 
new and scientific discoveries of God, of His goodness and 
power. It shows us more clearly than we saw before, 
what we already have and are; and most of all, it shows 
us what God is. Advancing in this light, we reflect it; 
and this light reveals the pure Mind-pictures, in silent 
prayer, even as photography grasps the solar light to por- 
tray the face of pleasant thought. 

What but silent prayer can meet the demand, "Pray 



40 NO AND YES 

without ceasing"? The apostle James said: "Ye ask, 
and receive not, because ye ask amiss, to consume it on 
your lusts." Because of vanity and self-righteousness, 
mortals seek, and expect to receive, a material sense of 
approval; and they expect also what is impossible, — a 
material and mortal sense of spiritual and immortal 
Truth. 

It is sometimes wise to hide from dull and base ears the 
pure pearls of awakened consciousness, lest your pearls 
be trampled upon. Words may belie desire, and pour 
forth a hypocrite's prayer; but thoughts are our honest 
conviction. I have no objection to audible prayer of the 
right kind; but the inaudible is more effectual. 

I instruct my students to pursue their mental ministra- 
tions very sacredly, and never to touch the human thought 
save to issues of Truth; never to trespass mentally on in- 
dividual rights; never to take away the rights, but only 
the wrongs of mankind. Otherwise they forfeit their 
ability to heal in Science. Only when sickness, sin, and 
fear obstruct the harmony of Mind and body, is it right 
for one mind to meddle with another mind, and control 
aright the thought struggling for freedom. 

It is Truth and Love that cast out fear and heal the sick, 
and mankind are better because of this. If a change in 
the religious views of the patient comes with the change to 
health, our Father has done this; for the human mind 
and body are made better only by divine influence. 



NO AND YES 41 



Should Christians Beware of Christian 
Science ? 

History repeats itself. The Pharisees of old warned 
the people to beware of Jesus, and contemptuously called 
him "this fellow." Jesus said, "For which of these 
works do ye stone me?" as much as to ask, Is it the 
work most derided and envied that is most acceptable to 
God? Not that he would cease to do the will of his Father 
on account of persecution, but he would repeat his work 
to the best advantage for mankind and the glory of his 
Father. 

There are sinners in all societies, and it is vain to look 
for perfection in churches or associations. The life of 
Christ is the perfect example; and to compare mortal 
lives with this model is to subject them to severe scrutiny. 
Without question, the subtlest forms of sin are trying to 
force the doors of Science and enter in; but this white 
sanctuary will never admit such as come to steal and to 
rob. Through long ages people have slumbered over 
Christ's commands, " Go ye into all the world, and preach 
the gospel;" "Heal the sick, cast out devils;" and now 
the Church seems almost chagrined that by new discoveries 
of Truth sin is losing prestige and power. 

The Rev. Dr. A. J. Gordon, a Boston Baptist clergyman, 
said in a sermon: "The prayer of faith shall save the 
sick, and it is doing it to-day; and as the faith of the Church 



42 NO AND YES 

increases, and Christians more and more learn their duty 
to believe all things written in the Scriptures, will such 
manifestations of God's power increase among us." Such 
sentiments are wholesome avowals of Christian Science. 
God is not unable or unwilling to heal, and mortals are not 
compelled to have other gods before Him, and employ 
material forms to meet a mental want. The divine Spirit 
supplies all human needs. Jesus said to the sick, "Thy 
sins are forgiven thee; rise up and walk!" God's pardon 
is the destruction of all "the ills that flesh is heir to." 

All power belongs to God; and it is not in all the vain 
power of dogma and philosophy to dispossess the divine 
Mind of healing power, or to cast out error with error, 
even in the name and for the sake of Christ, and so heal 
the sick. While Science is engulfing error in bottomless 
oblivion, the material senses would enthrone error as om- 
nipotent and omnipresent, with power to determine the 
fact and fate to being. It is said that the devil is the ape 
of God. The lie of evil holds its own by declaring itself 
both true and good. The path of Christian Science is be- 
set with false claimants, aping its virtues, but cleaving to 
their own vices. Denial of the authorship of "Science 
and Health with Key to the Scriptures" would make a 
lie the author of Truth, and so make Truth itself a lie. 

A distinguished clergyman came to be healed. He said: 
" I am suffering from nervous prostration, and have to eat 
beefsteak and drink strong coffee to support me through 
a sermon." Here a skeptic might well ask if the atone- 



NO AND YES 43 

ment had lost its efficacy for him, and if Christ's power to 
heal was not equal to the power of daily meat and drink. 
The power of Truth is not contingent on matter. Our 
Master said, "Come unto me, all ye that labor and are 
heavy laden, and I will give you rest." Truth rebukes 
error; and whether stall-fed or famishing, theology needs 
Truth to stimulate and sustain a good sermon. 

A lady said: "Only He who knows all things can esti- 
mate the good your books are doing." 

A distinguished Doctor of Divinity said: "Your book 
leavens my sermons." 

The following extract from a letter is a specimen of 
those received daily: "Your book Science and Health is 
healing the sick, binding up the broken-hearted, preach- 
ing deliverance to the captive, convicting the infidel, alarm- 
ing the hypocrite, and quickening the Christian." 

Christian Science Mind-healing is dishonored by those 
who take it up from mercenary motives, for wealth and 
fame, or think to build a baseless fabric of their own on 
another's foundation. They cannot put the "new wine 
into old bottles;" they can never engraft Truth into error. 
Such students come to my College to learn a system which 
they go away to disgrace. Stealing or garbling my state- 
ments of Mind-science will never prevent or reconstruct 
the wrecks of "isms" and help humanity. 

Science often suffers blame through the sheer ignorance 
of people, while envy and hatred bark and bite at its heels. 
A man's inability to heal, on the Principle of Christian 



44 NO AND YES 

Science, substantiates his ignorance of its Principle and 
practice, and incapacitates him for correct comment. 
This failure should make him modest. 

Christian Science involves a new language, and a higher 
demonstration of medicine and religion. It is the "new 
tongue" of Truth, having its best interpretation in the 
power of Christianity to heal. My system of Mind-heal- 
ing swerves not from the highest ethics and from the spirit- 
ual goal. To climb up by some other way than Truth is 
to fall. Error has no hobby, however boldly ridden or 
brilliantly caparisoned, that can leap into the sanctum 
of Christian Science. 

In Queen Elizabeth's time Protestantism could sentence 
men to the dungeon or stake for their religion, and so 
abrogate the rights of conscience and choke the channels 
of God. Ecclesiastical tyranny muzzled the mouth lisping 
God's praise; and instead of healing, it palsied the weak 
hand outstretched to God. Progress, legitimate to the 
human race, pours the healing balm of Truth and Love 
into every wound. It reassures us that no Reign of Terror 
or rule of error will again unite Church and State, or re- 
enact, through the civil arm of government, the horrors of 
religious persecution. 

The Rev. S. E. Herrick, a Congregational clergyman of 
Boston, says: "Heretics of yesterday are martyrs to-day." 
In every age and clime, "On earth peace, good will to- 
ward men" must be the watchword of Christianity. 

Jesus said: "I thank Thee, O Father, Lord of heaven 



NO AND YES 45 

and earth, that Thou hast hid these things from the wise 
and prudent, and hast revealed them unto babes." 

St. Paul said that without charity we are "as sound- 
ing brass, or a tinkling cymbal;" and he added: "Charity 
suffereth long, and is kind; . . . doth not behave itself 
unseemly, . . . thinkethno evil, . . . but rejoiceth in the 
truth." 

To hinder the unfolding truth, to ostracize whatever 
uplifts mankind, is of course out of the question. Such an 
attempt indicates weakness, fear, or malice; and such 
efforts arise from a spiritual lack, felt, though unacknowl- 
edged. 

Let it not be heard in Boston that woman, "last at the 
cross and first at the sepulchre," has no rights which man 
is bound to respect. In natural law and in religion the 
right of woman to fill the highest measure of enlightened 
understanding and the highest places in government, is 
inalienable, and these rights are ably vindicated by the 
noblest of both sexes. This is woman's hour, with all its 
sweet amenities and its moral and religious reforms. 

Drifting into intellectual wrestlings, we should agree to 
disagree; and this harmony would anchor the Church in 
more spiritual latitudes, and so fulfil her destiny. 

Let the Word have free course and be glorified. The 
people clamor to leave cradle and swaddling-clothes. The 
spiritual status is urging its highest demands on mortals, 
and material history is drawing to a close. Truth cannot 
be stereotyped; it unfoldeth forever. "One on God's 



46 NO AND YES 

side is a majority;" and "Lo, I am with you alway," is 
the pledge of the Master. 

The question now at issue is: Shall we have a prac- 
tical, spiritual Christianity, with its healing power, or 
shall we have material medicine and superficial religion? 
The advancing hope of the race, craving health and holi- 
ness, halts for a reply; and the reappearing Christ, whose 
life-giving understanding Christian Science imparts, must 
answer the constant inquiry: "Art thou he that should 
come?" Woman should not be ordered to the rear, or 
laid on the rack, for joining the overture of angels. Theo- 
logians descant pleasantly upon free moral agency; but 
they should begin by admitting individual rights. 

The author's ancestors were among the first settlers of 
New Hampshire. They reared there the Puritan standard 
of undefiled religion. As dutiful descendants of Puritans, 
let us lift their standard higher, rejoicing, as Paul did, 
that we are free born. 

Man has a noble destiny; and the full-orbed significance 
of this destiny has dawned on the sick-bound and sin- 
enslaved. For the unfolding of this upward tendency to 
health, greatness, and goodness, I shall continue to labor 
and wait. 



The University Press, Cambridge, U. S. A. 



RETROSPECTION 

AND 

INTROSPECTION 



RETROSPECTION 



AND 



INTROSPECTION 

BY 

MARY BAKER EDDY 

AUTHOR OF SCIENCE AND HEALTH WITH KEY TO THE 
SCRIPTURES 



BOSTON, U.S.A. 
Published by Allison V. Stewart 

for the trustees under the will of mary baker g. eddy 

Falmouth and St. Paul Streets 

1917 



Authorized Literature of 

The First Church of Christ, Scientist 

in Boston, Massachusetts 



Copyright, i8qi, i8q2 
By Mary Baker G. Eddy 



All rights reserved 



CONTENTS 

Page 

Ancestral Shadows i 

Autobiographic Reminiscences 4 

Voices Not Our Own 8 

Early Studies 10 

Girlhood Composition . . . 1 1 

Theological Reminiscence 13 

The Country-seat (Poem) .....,.'... 17 

Marriage and Parentage 19 

Emergence into Light 23 

The Great Discovery 24 

Foundation Work 30 

Medical Experiments -33 

First Publication 35 

The Precious Volume 37 

Recuperative Incident 40 

A True Man 42 

College and Church 43 

Feed My Sheep " (Poem) 46 

College Closed 47 



u 



vi CONTENTS 

Page 

General Associations and Our Magazine. . . 52 

Faith-cure 54 

Foundation-stones 56 

The Great Revelation 59 

Sin, Sinner, and Ecclesiasticism 63 

The Human Concept 67 

Personality 73 

Plagiarism 75 

Admonition 78 

Exemplification 86 

Waymarks 93 



RETROSPECTION AND 
INTROSPECTION 

ANCESTRAL SHADOWS 

lV/TY ancestors, according to the flesh, were from both 
-^ -■■ Scotland and England, my great-grandfather, on 
my father's side, being John McNeil of Edinburgh. 

His wife, my great-grandmother, was Marion Moor, 
and her family is said to have been in some way related 
to Hannah More, the pious and popular English authoress 
of a century ago. 

I remember reading, in my childhood, certain manu- 
scripts containing Scriptural sonnets, besides other verses 
and enigmas which my grandmother said were written 
by my great-grandmother. But because my great-grand- 
mother wrote a stray sonnet and an occasional riddle, it 
was no sign that she inherited a spark from Hannah More, 
or was her relative. 

John and Marion Moor McNeil had a daughter, who 
perpetuated her mother's name. This second Marion 
McNeil in due time was married to an Englishman, 
named Joseph Baker, and so became my paternal grand- 
mother, the Scotch and English elements thus mingling 
in her children. 

1 



2 RETROSPECTION AND INTROSPECTION 

Mrs. Marion McNeil Baker was reared among the 
Scotch Covenanters, and had in her character that sturdy 
Calvinistic devotion to Protestant liberty which gave those 
religionists the poetic daring and pious picturesqueness 
which we find so graphically set forth in the pages of Sir 
Walter Scott and in John Wilson's sketches. 

Joseph Baker and his wife, Marion McNeil, came to 
America seeking " freedom to worship God;" though 
they could hardly have crossed the Atlantic more than a 
score of years prior to the Revolutionary period. 

With them they brought to New England a heavy sword, 
encased in a brass scabbard, on which was inscribed the 
name of a kinsman upon whom the weapon had been 
bestowed by Sir William Wallace, from whose patriotism 
and bravery comes that heart-stirring air, "Scots wha hae 
wi' Wallace bled." 

My childhood was also gladdened by one of my Grand- 
mother Baker's books, printed in olden type and replete 
with the phraseology current in the seventeenth and eigh- 
teenth centuries. 

Among grandmother's treasures were some newspapers, 
yellow with age. Some of these, however, were not very 
ancient, nor had they crossed the ocean; for they were 
American newspapers, one of which contained a full ac- 
count of the death and burial of George Washington. 

A relative of my Grandfather Baker was General Henry 
Knox of Revolutionary fame. I was fond of listening, 
when a child, to grandmother's stories about General 
Knox, for whom she cherished a high regard. 

In the line of my Grandmother Baker's family was the 



ANCESTRAL SHADOWS 3 

late Sir John Macneill, a Scotch knight, who was promi- 
nent in British politics, and at one time held the position 
of ambassador to Persia. 

My grandparents were likewise connected with Capt. 
John Lovewell of Dunstable, New Hampshire, whose 
gallant leadership and death, in the Indian troubles of 
1722-1725, caused that prolonged contest to be known 
historically as LovewelFs War. 

A cousin of my grandmother was John Macneil, the 
New Hampshire general who fought at Lundy's Lane, 
and won distinction in 1814 at the neighboring battle of 
Chippewa, towards the close of the War of 1812. 



AUTOBIOGRAPHIC REMINISCENCES 

THIS venerable grandmother had thirteen children, 
the youngest of whom was my father, Mark Baker, 
who inherited the homestead, and with his brother, James 
Baker, he inherited my grandfather's farm of about five 
hundred acres, lying in the adjoining towns of Concord 
and Bow, in the State of New Hampshire. 

One hundred acres of the old farm are still cultivated 
and owned by Uncle James Baker's grandson, brother of 
the Hon. Henry Moore Baker of Washington, D. C. 

The farm-house, situated on the summit of a hill, com- 
manded a broad picturesque view of the Merrimac River 
and the undulating lands of three townships. But change 
has been busy. Where once stretched broad fields of 
bending grain waving gracefully in the sunlight, and 
orchards of apples, peaches, pears, and cherries shone 
richly in the mellow hues of autumn, — now the lone night- 
bird cries, the crow caws cautiously, and wandering winds 
sigh low requiems through dark pine groves. Where 
green pastures bright with berries, singing brooklets, 
beautiful wild flowers, and flecked with large flocks and 
herds, covered areas of rich acres, — now the scrub-oak, 
poplar, and fern flourish. 

The wife of Mark Baker was Abigail Barnard Ambrose, 
daughter of Deacon Nathaniel Ambrose of Pembroke, a 

4 



AUTOBIOGRAPHIC REMINISCENCES 5 

small town situated near Concord, just across the bridge, 
on the left bank of the Merrimac River. 

Grandfather Ambrose was a very religious man, and 
gave the money for erecting the first Congregational 
Church in Pembroke. 

In the Baker homestead at Bow I was born, the young- 
est of my parents' six children and the object of their 
tender solicitude. 

During my childhood my parents removed to Tilton, 
eighteen miles from Concord, and there the family re- 
mained until the names of both father and mother were 
inscribed on the stone memorials in the Park Cemetery 
of that beautiful village. 

My father possessed a strong intellect and an iron will. 
Of my mother I cannot speak as I would, for memory 
recalls qualities to which the pen can never do justice. 
The following is a brief extract from the eulogy of the Rev. 
Richard S. Rust, D. D., who for many years had re- 
sided in Tilton and knew my sainted mother in all the 
walks of life. 

The character of Mrs. Abigail Ambrose Baker was distin- 
guished for numerous excellences. She possessed a strong 
intellect, a sympathizing heart, and a placid spirit. Her 
presence, like the gentle dew and cheerful light, was felt by 
all around her. She gave an elevated character to the tone of 
conversation in the circles in which she moved, and directed 
attention to themes at once pleasing and profitable. 

As a mother, she was untiring in her efforts to secure the 
happiness of her family. She ever entertained a lively sense 
of the parental obligation, especially in regard to the educa- 



6 RETROSPECTION AND INTROSPECTION 

tion of her children. The oft-repeated impressions of that 
sainted spirit, on the hearts of those especially entrusted to her 
watch-care, can never be effaced, and can hardly fail to induce 
them to follow her to the brighter world. Her life was a 
living illustration of Christian faith. 

My childhood's home I remember as one with the open 
hand. The needy were ever welcome, and to the clergy 
were accorded special household privileges. 

Among the treasured reminiscences of my much re- 
spected parents, brothers, and sisters, is the memory of 
my second brother, Albert Baker, who was, next to my 
mother, the very dearest of my kindred. To speak of his 
beautiful character as I cherish it, would require more 
space than this little book can afford. 

My brother Albert was graduated at Dartmouth Col- 
lege in 1834, and was reputed one of the most talented, 
close, and thorough scholars ever connected with that 
institution. For two or three years he read law at Hills- 
borough, in the office of Franklin Pierce, afterwards Presi- 
dent of the United States; but later Albert spent a year 
in the office of the Hon. Richard Fletcher of Boston. 
He was consequently admitted to the bar in two States, 
Massachusetts and New Hampshire. In 1837 he suc- 
ceeded to the law-office which Mr. Pierce had occupied, 
and was soon elected to the Legislature of his native State, 
where he served the public interests faithfully for two 
consecutive years. Among other important bills which 
were carried through the Legislature by his persistent en- 
ergy was one for the abolition of imprisonment for debt. 

In 1841 he received further political preferment, by 



AUTOBIOGRAPHIC REMINISCENCES 7 

nomination to Congress on a majority vote of seven 
thousand, — it was the largest vote of the State; but he 
passed away at the age of thirty-one, after a short illness, 
before his election. His noble political antagonist, the 
Hon. Isaac Hill, of Concord, wrote of my brother as 
follows: — 

Albert Baker was a young man of uncommon promise. 
Gifted with the highest order of intellectual powers, he trained 
and schooled them by intense and almost incessant study 
throughout his short life. He was fond of investigating ab- 
struse and metaphysical principles, and he never forsook 
them until he had explored their every nook and corner, 
however hidden and remote. Had life and health been spared 
to him, he would have made himself one of the most distin- 
guished men in the country. As a lawyer he was able and 
learned, and in the successful practice of a very large business. 
He was noted for his boldness and firmness, and for his power- 
ful advocacy of the side he deemed right. His death will be 
deplored, with the most poignant grief, by a large number of 
friends, who expected no more than they realized from his 
talents and acquirements. This sad event will not be soon 
forgotten. It blights too many hopes; it carries with it too 
much of sorrow and loss. It is a public calamity. 



VOICES NOT OUR OWN 

MANY peculiar circumstances and events connected 
with my childhood throng the chambers of memory. 
For some twelve months, when I was about eight years 
old, I repeatedly heard a voice, calling me distinctly by 
name, three times, in an ascending scale. I thought this 
was my mother's voice, and sometimes went to her, be- 
seeching her to tell me what she wanted. Her answer was 
always, "Nothing, child! What do you mean?" Then 
I would say, "Mother, who did call me? I heard some- 
body call Mary, three times!" This continued until I 
grew discouraged, and my mother was perplexed and 
anxious. 

One day, when my cousin, Mehitable Huntoon, was 
visiting us, and I sat in a little chair by her side, in the 
same room with grandmother, — the call again came, so 
loud that Mehitable heard it, though I had ceased to 
notice it. Greatly surprised, my cousin turned to me and 
said, "Your mother is calling you!" but I answered not, 
till again the same call was thrice repeated. Mehitable 
then said sharply, "Why don't you go? your mother is 
calling you!" I then left the room, went to my mother, 
and once more asked her if she had summoned me? She 
answered as always before. Then I earnestly declared 
my cousin had heard the voice, and said that mother 



VOICES NOT OUR OWN 9 

wanted me. Accordingly she returned with me to grand- 
mother's room, and led my cousin into an adjoining apart- 
ment. The door was ajar, and I listened with bated 
breath. Mother told Mehitable all about this mysterious 
voice, and asked if she really did hear Mary's name pro- 
nounced in audible tones. My cousin answered quickly, 
and emphasized her affirmation. 

That night, before going to rest, my mother read to me 
the Scriptural narrative of little Samuel, and bade me, 
when the voice called again, to reply as he did, "Speak, 
Lord; for Thy servant heareth." The voice came; but 
I was afraid, and did not answer. Afterward I wept, and 
prayed that God would forgive me, resolving to do, next 
time, as my mother had bidden me. When the call came 
again I did answer, in the words of Samuel, but never 
again to the material senses was that mysterious call 
repeated. 

Is it not much that I may worship Him, 

With naught my spirit's breathings to control, 

And feel His presence in the vast and dim 

And whispering woods, where dying thunders roll 

From the far cataracts? Shall I not rejoice 

That I have learned at last to know His voice 
From man's? — I will rejoice! My soaring soul 

Now hath* redeemed her birthright of the day, 

And won, through clouds, to Him, her own unfettered way! 

— Mrs. Hemans. 



EARLY STUDIES 

TV/TY father was taught to believe that my brain was 
-L * -*- too large for my body and so kept me much out of 
school, but I gained book-knowledge with far less labor 
than is usually requisite. At ten years of age I was as 
familiar with Lindley Murray's Grammar as with the 
Westminster Catechism; and the latter I had to repeat 
every Sunday. My favorite studies were natural philoso- 
phy, logic, and moral science. From my brother Al- 
bert I received lessons in the ancient tongues, Hebrew, 
Greek, and Latin. My brother studied Hebrew during 
his college vacations. After my discovery of Christian 
Science, most of the knowledge I had gleaned from 
schoolbooks vanished like a dream. 

Learning was so illumined, that grammar was eclipsed. 
Etymology was divine history, voicing the idea of God in 
man's origin and signification. Syntax was spiritual order 
and unity. Prosody, the song of angels, and no earthly 
or inglorious theme. 



10 



GIRLHOOD COMPOSITION 

FROM childhood I was a verse-maker. Poetry suited 
my emotions better than prose. The following is 
one of my girlhood productions. 



Alphabet and Bayonet 

If fancy plumes aerial flight, 

Go fix thy restless mind 
On learning's lore and wisdom's might, 

And live to bless mankind. 
The sword is sheathed, 't is freedom's hour, 

No despot bears misrule, 
Where knowledge plants the foot of power 

In our God-blessed free school. 

Forth from this fount the streamlets flow, 

That widen in their course. 
Hero and sage arise to show 

Science the mighty source, 
And laud the land whose talents rock 

The cradle of her power, 
And wreaths are twined round Plymouth Rock, 

From erudition's bower. 

Farther than feet of chamois fall, 
Free as the generous air, 
11 



12 RETROSPECTION AND INTROSPECTION 

Strains nobler far than clarion call 
Wake freedom's welcome, where 

Minerva's silver sandals still 
Are loosed, and not effete; 

Where echoes still my day-dreams thrill, 
Woke by her fancied feet. 



THEOLOGICAL REMINISCENCE 

AT the age of twelve I was admitted to the Congre- 
gational (Trinitarian) Church, my parents having 
been members of that body for a half -century. In connec- 
tion with this event, some circumstances are noteworthy. 
Before this step was taken, the doctrine of unconditional 
election, or predestination, greatly troubled me; for I 
was unwilling to be saved, if my brothers and sisters were 
to be numbered among those who were doomed to per- 
petual banishment from God. So perturbed was I by the 
thoughts aroused by this erroneous doctrine, that the 
family doctor was summoned, and pronounced me stricken 
with fever. 

My father's relentless theology emphasized belief in a 
final judgment-day, in the danger of endless punishment, 
and in a Jehovah merciless towards unbelievers; and of 
these things he now spoke, hoping to win me from dreaded 
heresy. 

My mother, as she bathed my burning temples, bade 
me lean on God's love, which would give me rest, if I 
went to Him in prayer, as I was wont to do, seeking His 
guidance. I prayed; and a soft glow of ineffable joy came 
over me. The fever was gone, and I rose and dressed 
myself, in a normal condition of health. Mother saw this, 
and was glad. The physician marvelled; and the "hor- 

13 



14 RETROSPECTION AND INTROSPECTION 

rible decree" of predestination — as John Calvin rightly 
called his own tenet — forever lost its power over me. 

When the meeting was held for the examination of can- 
didates for membership, I was of course present. The 
pastor was an old-school expounder of the strictest Pres- 
byterian doctrines. He was apparently as eager to have 
unbelievers in these dogmas lost, as he was to have elect 
believers converted and rescued from perdition; for both 
salvation and condemnation depended, according to his 
views, upon the good pleasure of infinite Love. However, I 
was ready for his doleful questions, which I answered with- 
out a tremor, declaring that never could I unite with the 
church, if assent to this doctrine was essential thereto. 

Distinctly do I recall what followed. I stoutly main- 
tained that I was willing to trust God, and take my chance 
of spiritual safety with my brothers and sisters, — not one 
of whom had then made any profession of religion, — 
even if my creedal doubts left me outside the doors. The 
minister then wished me to tell him when I had experi- 
enced a change of heart; but tearfully I had to respond 
that I could not designate any precise time. Nevertheless 
he persisted in the assertion that I had been truly regene- 
rated, and asked me to say how I felt when the new light 
dawned within me. I replied that I could only answer 
him in the words of the Psalmist: "Search me, O God, 
and know my heart: try me, and know my thoughts: 
and see if there be any wicked way in me, and lead me in 
the way everlasting." 

This was so earnestly said, that even the oldest church- 
members wept. After the meeting was over they came 



THEOLOGICAL REMINISCENCE 15 

and kissed me. To the astonishment of many, the good 
clergyman's heart also melted, and he received me into 
their communion, and my protest along with me. My con- 
nection with this religious body was retained till I founded 
a church of my own, built on the basis of Christian Science, 
"Jesus Christ himself being the chief corner-stone.'' 

In confidence of faith, I could say in David's words, 
"I will go in the strength of the Lord God: I will make 
mention of Thy righteousness, even of Thine only. O 
God, Thou hast taught me from my youth: and hith- 
erto have I declared Thy wondrous works." (Psalms lxxi. 
16, 17.) 

In the year 1878 I was called to preach in Boston at the 
Baptist Tabernacle of Rev. Daniel C. Eddy, D. D., — by 
the pastor of this church. I accepted the invitation and 
commenced work. 

The congregation so increased in number the pews were 
not sufficient to seat the audience and benches were used 
in the aisles. At the close of my engagement we parted 
in Christian fellowship, if not in full unity of doctrine. 

Our last vestry meeting was made memorable by elo- 
quent addresses from persons who feelingly testified to 
having been healed through my preaching. Among other 
diseases cured they specified cancers. The cases described 
had been treated and given over by physicians of the popu- 
lar schools of medicine, but I had not heard of these cases 
till the persons who divulged their secret joy were healed. 
A prominent churchman agreeably informed the congre- 
gation that many others present had been healed under 
my preaching, but were too timid to testify in public. 



16 RETROSPECTION AND INTROSPECTION 

One memorable Sunday afternoon, a soprano, — clear, 
strong, sympathetic, — floating up from the pews, caught 
my ear. When the meeting was over, two ladies pushing 
their way through the crowd reached the platform. With 
tears of joy flooding her eyes — for she was a mother — 
one of them said, "Did you hear my daughter sing? Why, 
she has not sung before since she left the choir and was 
in consumption! When she entered this church one hour 
ago she could not speak a loud word, and now, oh, thank 
God, she is healed !" 

It was not an uncommon occurrence in my own church 
for the sick to be healed by my sermon. Many pale cripples 
went into the church leaning on crutches who went out 
carrying them on their shoulders. "And these signs shall 
follow them that believe/' 

The charter for The Mother Church in Boston was ob- 
tained June, 1879, and the same month the members, 
twenty-six in number, extended a call to Mary B. G. Eddy 
to become their pastor. She accepted the call, and was 
ordained A. D. 1881. 



THE COUNTRY-SEAT 

Written in youth, while visiting a family friend in the beautiful 
suburbs of Boston. 



WLD spirit of song, — midst the zephyrs at play- 
In bowers of beauty, — I bend to thy lay, 
And woo, while I worship in deep sylvan spot, 
The Muses' soft echoes to kindle the grot. 
Wake chords of my lyre, with musical kiss, 
To vibrate and tremble with accents of bliss. 

Here morning peers out, from her crimson repose, 
On proud Prairie Queen and the modest Moss-rose; 
And vesper reclines — when the dewdrop is shed 
On the heart of the pink — in its odorous bed; 
But Flora has stolen the rainbow and sky, 
To sprinkle the flowers with exquisite dye. 

Here fame-honored hickory rears his bold form, 
And bares a brave breast to the lightning and storm, 
While palm, bay, and laurel, in classical glee, 
Chase tulip, magnolia, and fragrant fringe-tree; 
And sturdy horse-chestnut for centuries hath given 
Its feathery blossom and branches to heaven. 

17 



18 RETROSPECTION AND INTROSPECTION 

Here is life! Here is youth! Here the poet's world- 
wish, — 
Cool waters at play with the gold-gleaming fish; 
While cactus a mellower glory receives 
From light colored softly by blossom and leaves; 
And nestling alder is whispering low, 
In lap of the pear-tree, with musical flow. 1 

Dark sentinel hedgerow is guarding repose, 
Midst grotto and songlet and streamlet that flows 
Where beauty and perfume from buds burst away, 
And ope their closed cells to the bright, laughing day; 
Yet, dwellers in Eden, earth yields you her tear, — 
Oft plucked for the banquet, but laid on the bier. 

Earth's beauty and glory delude as the shrine 
Or fount of real joy and of visions divine; 
But hope, as the eaglet that spurneth the sod, 
May soar above matter, to fasten on God, 
And freely adore all His spirit hath made, 
Where rapture and radiance and glory ne'er fade. 

Oh, give me the spot where affection may dwell 
In sacred communion with home's magic spell ! 
Where flowers of feeling are fragrant and fair, 
And those we most love find a happiness rare; 
But clouds are a presage, — they darken my lay: 
This life is a shadow, and hastens away. 

1 An alder growing from the bent branch of a pear-tree. 



MARRIAGE AND PARENTAGE 

TN 1843 I was united to my first husband, Colonel George 
-^ Washington Glover of Charleston, South Carolina, 
the ceremony taking place under the paternal roof in 
Tilton. 

After parting with the dear home circle I went with 
him to the South; but he was spared to me for only one 
brief year. He was in Wilmington, North Carolina, on 
business, when the yellow-fever raged in that city, and was 
suddenly attacked by this insidious disease, which in his 
case proved fatal. 

My husband was a freemason, being a member in Saint 
Andrew's Lodge, Number 10, and of Union Chapter, Num- 
ber 3, of Royal Arch masons. He was highly esteemed 
and sincerely lamented by a large circle of friends and ac- 
quaintances, whose kindness and sympathy helped to sup- 
port me in this terrible bereavement. A month later I 
returned to New Hampshire, where, at the end of four 
months, my babe was born. 

Colonel Glover's tender devotion to his young bride 
was remarked by all observers. With his parting breath 
he gave pathetic directions to his brother masons about 
accompanying her on her sad journey to the North. Here 
it is but justice to record, they performed their obligations 
most faithfully. 

19 



20 RETROSPECTION AND INTROSPECTION 

After returning to the paternal roof I lost all my hus- 
band's property, except what money I had brought with 
me ; and remained with my parents until after my mother's 
decease. 

A few months before my father's second marriage, to 
Mrs. Elizabeth Patterson Duncan, sister of Lieutenant- 
Governor George W. Patterson of New York, my little 
son, about four years of age, was sent away from me, and 
put under the care of our family nurse, who had married, 
and resided in the northern part of New Hampshire. I 
had no training for self-support, and my home I regarded 
as very precious. The night before my child was taken 
from me, I knelt by his side throughout the dark hours, 
hoping for a vision of relief from this trial. The follow- 
ing lines are taken from my poem, "Mother's Darling," 
written after this separation: — 

Thy smile through tears, as sunshine o'er the sea, 

Awoke new beauty in the surge's roll! 
Oh, life is dead, bereft of all, with thee, — 

Star of my earthly hope, babe of my soul. 

My second marriage was very unfortunate, and from it 
I was compelled to ask for a bill of divorce, which was 
granted me in the city of Salem, Massachusetts. 

My dominant thought in marrying again was to get 
back my child, but after our marriage his stepfather was 
not willing he should have a home with me. A plot was 
consummated for keeping us apart. The family to whose 
care he was committed very soon removed to what was 
then regarded as the Far West. 



MARRIAGE AND PARENTAGE 21 

After his removal a letter was read to my little son, 
informing him that his mother was dead and buried. 
Without my knowledge a guardian was appointed him, and 
I was then informed that my son was lost. Every means 
within my power was employed to find him, but without 
success. We never met again until he had reached the 
age of thirty-four, had a wife and two children, and by a 
strange providence had learned that his mother still lived, 
and came to see me in Massachusetts. 

Meanwhile he had served as a volunteer throughout 
the war for the Union, and at its expiration was appointed 
United States Marshal of the Territory of Dakota. 

It is well to know, dear reader, that our material, mortal 
history is but the record of dreams, not of man's real ex- 
istence, and the dream has no place in the Science of being. 
It is "as a tale that is told/' and "as the shadow when it 
declineth." The heavenly intent of earth's shadows is to 
chasten the affections, to rebuke human consciousness and 
turn it gladly from a material, false sense of life and happi- 
ness, to spiritual joy and true estimate of being. 

The awakening from a false sense of life, substance, and 
mind in matter, is as yet imperfect; but for those lucid 
and enduring lessons of Love which tend to this result, 
I bless God. 

Mere historic incidents and personal events are frivo- 
lous and of no moment, unless they illustrate the ethics of 
Truth. To this end, but only to this end, such narrations 
may be admissible and advisable; but if spiritual con- 
clusions are separated from their premises, the nexus is 
lost, and the argument, with its rightful conclusions, be- 



22 RETROSPECTION AND INTROSPECTION 

comes correspondingly obscure. The human history needs 
to be revised, and the material record expunged. 

The Gospel narratives bear brief testimony even to the 
life of our great Master. His spiritual noumenon and 
phenomenon silenced portraiture. Writers less wise than 
the apostles essayed in the Apocryphal New Testament 
a legendary and traditional history of the early life of 
Jesus. But St. Paul summarized the character of Jesus 
as the model of Christianity, in these words: "Consider 
him that endured such contradiction of sinners against 
himself." "Who for the joy that was set before him en- 
dured the cross, despising the shame, and is set down 
at the right hand of the throne of God." 

It may be that the mortal life-battle still wages, and 
must continue till its involved errors are vanquished by 
victory-bringing Science; but this triumph will come! 
God is over all. He alone is our origin, aim, and being. 
The real man is not of the dust, nor is he ever created 
through the flesh; for his father and mother are the one 
Spirit, and his brethren are all the children of one parent, 
the eternal good. 



EMERGENCE INTO LIGHT 

THE trend of human life was too eventful to leave me 
undisturbed in the illusion that this so-called life 
could be a real and abiding rest. All things earthly must 
ultimately yield to the irony of fate, or else be merged 
into the one infinite Love. 

As these pungent lessons became clearer, they grew 
sterner. Previously the cloud of mortal mind seemed to 
have a silver lining; but now it was not even fringed with 
light. Matter was no longer spanned with its rainbow 
of promise. The world was dark. The oncoming hours 
were indicated by no floral dial. The senses could not 
prophesy sunrise or starlight. 

Thus it was when the moment arrived of the heart's 
bridal to more spiritual existence. When the door opened, 
I was waiting and watching; and, lo, the bridegroom 
came! The character of the Christ was illuminated by 
the midnight torches of Spirit. My heart knew its Re- 
deemer. He whom my affections had diligently sought 
was as the One "altogether lovely," as "the chiefest," 
the only, "among ten thousand." Soulless famine had 
fled. Agnosticism, pantheism, and theosophy were void. 
Being was beautiful, its substance, cause, and currents 
were God and His idea. I had touched the hem of Chris- 
tian Science. 

23 



THE GREAT DISCOVERY 

TT was in Massachusetts, in February, 1866, and after 
* the death of the magnetic doctor, Mr. P. P. Quimby, 
whom spiritualists would associate therewith, but who 
was in no wise connected with this event, that I discov- 
ered the Science of divine metaphysical healing which I 
afterwards named Christian Science. The discovery came 
to pass in this way. During twenty years prior to my 
discovery I had been trying to trace all physical effects to 
a mental cause; and in the latter part of 1866 I gained 
the scientific certainty that all causation was Mind, and 
every effect a mental phenomenon. 

My immediate recovery from the effects of an injury 
caused by an accident, an injury that neither medicine nor 
surgery could reach, was the falling apple that led me to 
the discovery how to be well myself, and how to make 
others so. 

Even to the homoeopathic physician who attended me, 
and rejoiced in my recovery, I could not then explain the 
modus of my relief. I could only assure him that the divine 
Spirit had wrought the miracle — a miracle which later 
I found to be in perfect scientific accord with divine law. 

I then withdrew from society about three years, — to 
ponder my mission, to search the Scriptures, to find the 
Science of Mind that should take the things of God and 

24 



THE GREAT DISCOVERY 25 

show them to the creature, and reveal the great curative 
Principle, — Deity. 

The Bible was my textbook. It answered my questions 
as to how I was healed; but the Scriptures had to me a 
new meaning, a new tongue. Their spiritual significa- 
tion appeared; and I apprehended for the first time, in 
their spiritual meaning, Jesus' teaching and demonstra- 
tion, and the Principle and rule of spiritual Science and 
metaphysical healing, — in a word, Christian Science. 

I named it Christian, because it is compassionate, 
helpful, and spiritual. God I called immortal Mind. That 
which sins, suffers, and dies, I named mortal mind. The 
physical senses, or sensuous nature, I called error and 
shadow. Soul I denominated substance, because Soul 
alone is truly substantial. God I characterized as individ- 
ual entity, but His corporeality I denied. The real I 
claimed as eternal; and its antipodes, or the temporal, 
I described as unreal. Spirit I called the reality; and 
matter, the unreality. 

I knew the human conception of God to be that He was 
a physically personal being, like unto man; and that the 
five physical senses are so many witnesses to the physical 
personality of mind and the real existence of matter; but 
I learned that these material senses testify falsely, that 
matter neither sees, hears, nor feels Spirit, and is therefore 
inadequate to form any proper conception of the infinite 
Mind. "If I bear witness of myself, my witness is not 
true." (John v. 31.) 

I beheld with ineffable awe our great Master's purpose 
in not questioning those he healed as to their disease or 



26 RETROSPECTION AND INTROSPECTION 

its symptoms, and his marvellous skill in demanding 
neither obedience to hygienic laws, nor prescribing drugs 
to support the divine power which heals. Adoringly I 
discerned the Principle of his holy heroism and Christian 
example on the cross, when he refused to drink the "vine- 
gar and gall," a preparation of poppy, or aconite, to allay 
the tortures of crucifixion. 

Our great Way-shower, steadfast to the end in his obedi- 
ence to God's laws, demonstrated for all time and peoples 
the supremacy of good over evil, and the superiority of 
Spirit over matter. 

The miracles recorded in the Bible, which had before 
seemed to me supernatural, grew divinely natural and ap- 
prehensible; though uninspired interpreters ignorantly 
pronounce Christ's healing miraculous, instead of seeing 
therein the operation of the divine law. 

Jesus of Nazareth was a natural and divine Scientist. 
He was so before the material world saw him. He who 
antedated Abraham, and gave the world a new date in the 
Christian era, was a Christian Scientist, who needed no 
discovery of the Science of being in order to rebuke the 
evidence. To one "born of the flesh," however, divine 
Science must be a discovery. Woman must give it birth. 
It must be begotten of spirituality, since none but the pure 
in heart can see God, — the Principle of all things pure; 
and none but the "poor in spirit" could first state this 
Principle, could know yet more of the nothingness of mat- 
ter and the allness of Spirit, could utilize Truth, and ab- 
solutely reduce the demonstration of being, in Science, to 
the apprehension of the age. 



THE GREAT DISCOVERY 27 

I wrote also, at this period, comments on the Scriptures, 
setting forth their spiritual interpretation, the Science of 
the Bible, and so laid the foundation of my work called 
Science and Health, published in 1875. 

If these notes and comments, which have never been 
read by any one but myself, were published, it would 
show that after my discovery of the absolute Science 
of Mind-healing, like all great truths, this spiritual 
Science developed itself to me until Science and 
Health was written. These early comments are valu- 
able to me as waymarks of progress, which I would not 
have effaced. 

Up to that time I had not fully voiced my discov- 
ery. Naturally, my first jottings were but efforts to 
express in feeble diction Truth's ultimate. In Longfellow's 
language, — 

But the feeble hands and helpless, 
Groping blindly in the darkness, 
Touch God's right hand in that darkness, 
And are lifted up and strengthened. 

As sweet music ripples in one's first thoughts of it like 
the brooklet in its meandering midst pebbles and rocks, 
before the mind can duly express it to the ear, — so the 
harmony of divine Science first broke upon my sense, 
before gathering experience and confidence to articulate 
it. Its natural manifestation is beautiful and euphonious, 
but its written expression increases in power and perfection 
under the guidance of the great Master. 

The divine hand led me into a new world of light and 
Life, a fresh universe — old to God, but new to His "little 



28 RETROSPECTION AND INTROSPECTION 

one." It became evident that the divine Mind alone must 
answer, and be found as the Life, or Principle, of all being; 
and that one must acquaint himself with God, if he would 
be at peace. He must be ours practically, guiding our 
every thought and action; else we cannot understand 
the omnipresence of good sufficiently to demonstrate, 
even in part, the Science of the perfect Mind and divine 
healing. 

I had learned that thought must be spiritualized, in 
order to apprehend Spirit. It must become honest, un- 
selfish, and pure, in order to have the least understanding 
of God in divine Science. The first must become last. 
Our reliance upon material things must be transferred to 
a perception of and dependence on spiritual things. For 
Spirit to be supreme in demonstration, it must be supreme 
in our affections, and we must be clad with divine power. 
Purity, self-renunciation, faith, and understanding must 
reduce all things real to their own mental denomina- 
tion, Mind, which divides, subdivides, increases, dimin- 
ishes, constitutes, and sustains, according to the law of 
God. 

I had learned that Mind reconstructed the body, and 
that nothing else could. How it was done, the spiritual 
Science of Mind must reveal. It was a mystery to me 
then, but I have since understood it. All Science is a 
revelation. Its Principle is divine, not human, reaching 
higher than the stars of heaven. 

Am I a believer in spiritualism? I believe in no ism. 
This is my endeavor, to be a Christian, to assimilate the 
character and practice of the anointed; and no motive 



THE GREAT DISCOVERY 29 

can cause a surrender of this effort. As I understand it, 
spiritualism is the antipode of Christian Science. I esteem 
all honest people, and love them, and hold to loving our 
enemies and doing good to them that " despitef ully use 
you and persecute you." 



FOUNDATION WORK 

AS the pioneer of Christian Science I stood alone in 
this conflict, endeavoring to smite error with the 
falchion of Truth. The rare bequests of Christian Science 
are costly, and they have won fields of battle from which 
the dainty borrower would have fled. Ceaseless toil, self- 
renunciation, and love, have cleared its pathway. 

The motive of my earliest labors has never changed. 
It was to relieve the sufferings of humanity by a sanitary 
system that should include all moral and religious reform. 

It is often asked why Christian Science was revealed to 
me as one intelligence, analyzing, uncovering, and annihi- 
lating the false testimony of the physical senses. Why was 
this conviction necessary to the right apprehension of the 
invincible and infinite energies of Truth and Love, as con- 
trasted with the foibles and fables of finite mind and ma- 
terial existence. 

The answer is plain. St. Paul declared that the law 
was the schoolmaster, to bring him to Christ. Even so 
was I led into the mazes of divine metaphysics through 
the gospel of suffering, the providence of God, and the 
cross of Christ. No one else can drain the cup which I 
have drunk to the dregs as the Discoverer and teacher of 
Christian Science; neither can its inspiration be gained 
without tasting this cup. 

30 



FOUNDATION WORK 31 

The loss of material objects of affection sunders the 
dominant ties of earth and points to heaven. Nothing 
can compete with Christian Science, and its demonstra- 
tion, in showing this solemn certainty in growing freedom 
and vindicating "the ways of God" to man. The abso- 
lute proof and self-evident propositions of Truth are im- 
measurably paramount to rubric and dogma in proving 
the Christ. 

From my very childhood I was impelled, by a hunger 
and thirst after divine things, — a desire for something 
higher and better than matter, and apart from it, — to 
seek diligently for the knowledge of God as the one great 
and ever-present relief from human woe. The first spon- 
taneous motion of Truth and Love, acting through Chris- 
tian Science on my roused consciousness, banished at once 
and forever the fundamental error of faith in things ma- 
terial; for this trust is the unseen sin, the unknown foe, — 
the heart's untamed desire which breaketh the divine com- 
mandments. As says St. James: "Whosoever shall keep 
the whole law, and yet offend in one point, he is guilty 
of all" 

Into mortal mind's material obliquity I gazed, and stood 
abashed. Blanched was the cheek of pride. My heart 
bent low before the omnipotence of Spirit, and a tint of 
humility, soft as the heart of a moonbeam, mantled the 
earth. Bethlehem and Bethany, Gethsemane and Calvary, 
spoke to my chastened sense as by the tearful lips of a 
babe. Frozen fountains were unsealed. Erudite systems 
of philosophy and religion melted, for Love unveiled the 
healing promise and potency of a present spiritual afflatus. 



32 RETROSPECTION AND INTROSPECTION 

It was the gospel of healing, on its divinely appointed 
human mission, bearing on its white wings, to my appre- 
hension, a the beauty of holiness," — even the possibili- 
ties of spiritual insight, knowledge, and being. 

Early had I learned that whatever is loved materially, 
as mere corporeal personality, is eventually lost. "For 
whosoever will save his life shall lose it/' saith the Master. 
Exultant hope, if tinged with earthliness, is crushed as the 
moth. 

What is termed mortal and material existence is graph- 
ically defined by Calderon, the famous Spanish poet, who 
wrote, — 

What is life? 'T is but a madness. 

What is life? A mere illusion, 

Fleeting pleasure, fond delusion, 
Short-lived joy, that ends in sadness, 

Whose most constant substance seems 

But the dream of other dreams. 



MEDICAL EXPERIMENTS 

THE physical side of this research was aided by hints 
from homoeopathy, sustaining my final conclusion 
that mortal belief, instead of the drug, governed the action 
of material medicine. 

I wandered through the dim mazes of materia medica, 
till I was weary of "scientific guessing," as it has been well 
called. I sought knowledge from the different schools, — 
allopathy, homoeopathy, hydropathy, electricity, and from 
various humbugs, — but without receiving satisfaction. 

I found, in the two hundred and sixty-two remedies 
enumerated by Jahr, one pervading secret; namely, that 
the less material medicine we have, and the more Mind, 
the better the work is done; a fact which seems to prove 
the Principle of Mind-healing. One drop of the thirtieth 
attenuation of Natrum muriaticum, in a tumbler-full 
of water, and one teaspoonful of the water mixed with 
the faith of ages, would cure patients not affected by a 
larger dose. The drug disappears in the higher attenua- 
tions of homoeopathy, and matter is thereby rarefied to 
its fatal essence, mortal mind; but immortal Mind, the 
curative Principle, remains, and is found to be even more 
active. 

The mental virtues of the material methods of medicine, 
when understood, were insufficient to satisfy my doubts 

33 



34 RETROSPECTION AND INTROSPECTION 

as to the honesty or utility of using a material curative. I 
must know more of the unmixed, unerring source, in order 
to gain the Science of Mind, the All-in-all of Spirit, in 
which matter is obsolete. Nothing less could solve the 
mental problem. If I sought an answer from the medical 
schools, the reply was dark and contradictory. Neither 
ancient nor modern philosophy could clear the clouds, or 
give me one distinct statement of the spiritual Science of 
Mind-healing. Human reason was not equal to it. 

I claim for healing scientifically the following advan- 
tages: First: It does away with all material medicines, 
and recognizes the antidote for all sickness, as well as sin, 
in the immortal Mind; and mortal mind as the source of 
all the ills which befall mortals. Second: It is more effec- 
tual than drugs, and cures when they fail, or only relieve; 
thus proving the superiority of metaphysics over physics. 
Third: A person healed by Christian Science is not only 
healed of his disease, but he is advanced morally and 
spiritually. The mortal body being but the objective state 
of the mortal mind, this mind must be renovated to im- 
prove the body. 



FIRST PUBLICATION 

IN 1870 I copyrighted the first publication on spirit- 
ual, scientific Mind-healing, entitled "The Science of 
Man." This little book is converted into the chapter on 
Recapitulation in Science and Health. It was so new — 
the basis it laid down for physical and moral health was 
so hopelessly original, and men were so unfamiliar with 
the subject — that I did not venture upon its publication 
until later, having learned that the merits of Christian 
Science must be proven before a work on this subject 
could be profitably published. 

The truths of Christian Science are not interpolations 
of the Scriptures, but the spiritual interpretations thereof. 
Science is the prism of Truth, which divides its rays and 
brings out the hues of Deity. Human hypotheses have 
darkened the glow and grandeur of evangelical religion. 
When speaking of his true followers in every period, Jesus 
said, " They shall lay hands on the sick, and they shall 
recover." There is no authority for querying the authen- 
ticity of this declaration, for it already was and is demon- 
strated as practical, and its claim is substantiated, — a 
claim too immanent to fall to the ground beneath the stroke 
of artless workmen. 

Though a man were girt with the Urim and Thummim 
of priestly office, and denied the perpetuity of Jesus' com- 

35 



36 RETROSPECTION AND INTROSPECTION 

mand, "Heal the sick/' or its application in all time to 
those who understand Christ as the Truth and the Life, 
that man would not expound the gospel according to 
Jesus. 

Five years after taking out my first copyright, I taught 
the Science of Mind-healing, alias Christian Science, by 
writing out my manuscripts for students and distribut- 
ing them unsparingly. This will account for certain pub- 
lished and unpublished manuscripts extant, which the 
evil-minded would insinuate did not originate with me. 



THE PRECIOUS VOLUME 

THE first edition of my most important work, Science 
and Health, containing the complete statement of 
Christian Science, — the term employed by me to express 
the divine, or spiritual, Science of Mind-healing, was pub- 
lished in 1875. 

When it was first printed, the critics took pleasure in 
saying, "This book is indeed wholly original, but it will 
never be read." 

The first edition numbered one thousand copies. In 
September, 1891, it had reached sixty- two editions. 

Those who formerly sneered at it, as foolish and ec- 
centric, now declare Bishop Berkeley, David Hume, Ralph 
Waldo Emerson, or certain German philosophers, to have 
been the originators of the Science of Mind-healing as 
therein stated. 

Even the Scriptures gave no direct interpretation of the 
scientific basis for demonstrating the spiritual Principle 
of healing, until our heavenly Father saw fit, through the 
Key to the Scriptures, in Science and Health, to unlock 
this "mystery of godliness." 

My reluctance to give the public, in my first edition of 
Science and Health, the chapter on Animal Magnetism, 
and the divine purpose that this should be done, may 
have an interest for the reader, and will be seen in the fol- 

37 



38 RETROSPECTION AND INTROSPECTION 

lowing circumstances. I had finished that edition as far 
as that chapter, when the printer informed me that he 
could not go on with my work. I had already paid 
him seven hundred dollars, and yet he stopped my work. 
All efforts to persuade him to finish my book were in 
vain. 

After months had passed, I yielded to a constant con- 
viction that I must insert in my last chapter a partial 
history of what I had already observed of mental mal- 
practice. Accordingly, I set to work, contrary to my in- 
clination, to fulfil this painful task, and finished my copy 
for the book. As it afterwards appeared, although I had 
not thought of such a result, my printer resumed his work 
at the same time, finished printing the copy he had on 
hand, and then started for Lynn to see me. The after- 
noon that he left Boston for Lynn, I started for Boston 
with my finished copy. We met at the Eastern depot in 
Lynn, and were both surprised, — I to learn that he had 
printed all the copy on hand, and had come to tell me he 
wanted more, — he to find me en route for Boston, to give 
him the closing chapter of my first edition of Science and 
Health. Not a word had passed between us, audibly or 
mentally, while this went on. I had grown disgusted 
with my printer, and become silent. He had come to 
a standstill through motives and circumstances unknown 
to me. 

Science and Health is the textbook of Christian Science. 
Whosoever learns the letter of this book, must also gain 
its spiritual significance, in order to demonstrate Christian 
Science. 



THE PRECIOUS VOLUME 39 

When the demand for this book increased, and people 
were healed simply by reading it, the copyright was in- 
fringed. I entered a suit at law, and my copyright was 
protected. 



RECUPERATIVE INCIDENT 

THROUGH four successive years I healed, preached, 
and taught in a general way, refusing to take any 
pay for my services and living on a small annuity. 

At one time I was called to speak before the Lyceum 
Club, at Westerly, Rhode Island. On my arrival my 
hostess told me that her next-door neighbor was dying. 
I asked permission to see her. It was granted, and with 
my hostess I went to the invalid's house. 

The physicians had given up the case and retired. I 
had stood by her side about fifteen minutes when the sick 
woman rose from her bed, dressed herself, and was well. 
Afterwards they showed me the clothes already prepared 
for her burial; and told me that her physicians had said 
the diseased condition was caused by an injury received 
from a surgical operation at the birth of her last babe, and 
that it was impossible for her to be delivered of another 
child. It is sufficient to add her babe was safely born, 
and weighed twelve pounds. The mother afterwards 
wrote to me, "I never before suffered so little in child- 
birth." 

This scientific demonstration so stirred the doctors and 
clergy that they had my notices for a second lecture pulled 
down, and refused me a hearing in their halls and churches. 
This circumstance is cited simply to show the opposition 

40 



RECUPERATIVE INCIDENT 41 

which Christian Science encountered a quarter-century 
ago, as contrasted with its present welcome into the sick- 
room. 

Many were the desperate cases I instantly healed, 
"without money and without price/ ' and in most instances 
without even an acknowledgment of the benefit. 



A TRUE MAN 

IVfY last marriage was with Asa Gilbert Eddy, and 
■^*A was a blessed and spiritual union, solemnized at 
Lynn, Massachusetts, by the Rev. Samuel Barrett Stewart, 
in the year 1877. Dr. Eddy was the first student publicly 
to announce himself a Christian Scientist, and place these 
symbolic words on his office sign. He forsook all to follow 
in this line of light. He was the first organizer of a Chris- 
tian Science Sunday School, which he superintended. He 
also taught a special Bible-class; and he lectured so ably 
on Scriptural topics that clergymen of other denomina- 
tions listened to him with deep interest. He was remark- 
ably successful in Mind-healing, and untiring in his chosen 
work. In 1882 he passed away, with a smile of peace and 
love resting on his serene countenance. "Mark the per- 
fect man, and behold the upright: for the end of that man 
is peace." (Psalms xxxvii. 37.) 



42 



COLLEGE AND CHURCH 

IN 1867 I introduced the first purely metaphysical sys- 
tem of healing since the apostolic days. I began by 
teaching one student Christian Science Mind-healing. 
From this seed grew the Massachusetts Metaphysical 
College in Boston, chartered in 1881. No charter was 
granted for similar purposes after 1883. It is the only 
College, hitherto, for teaching the pathology of spiritual 
power, alias the Science of Mind-healing. 

My husband, Asa G. Eddy, taught two terms in my 
College. After I gave up teaching, my adopted son, 
Ebenezer J. Foster-Eddy, a graduate of the Hahneman 
Medical College of Philadelphia, and who also received a 
certificate from Dr. W. W. Keen's (allopathic) Philadelphia 
School of Anatomy and Surgery, — having renounced his 
material method of practice and embraced the teach- 
ings of Christian Science, taught the Primary, Normal, 
and Obstetric class one term. Gen. Erastus N. Bates 
taught one Primary class, in 1889, after which I judged 
it best to close the institution. These students of mine 
were the only assistant teachers in the College. 

The first Christian Scientist Association was organized 
by myself and six of my students in 1876, on the Centen- 
nial Day of our nation's freedom. At a meeting of the 
Christian Scientist Association, on April 19, 1879, it was 

43 



44 RETROSPECTION AND INTROSPECTION 

voted to organize a church to commemorate the words 
and works of our Master, a Mind-healing church, without 
a creed, to be called the Church of Christ, Scientist, the 
first such church ever organized. The charter for this 
church was obtained in June, 1879, and during the same 
month the members, twenty-six in number, extended a 
call to me to become their pastor. I accepted the call, 
and was ordained in 1881, though I had preached five 
years before being ordained. 

When I was its pastor, and in the pulpit every Sunday, 
my church increased in members, and its spiritual growth 
kept pace with its increasing popularity; but when obliged, 
because of accumulating work in the College, to preach 
only occasionally, no student, at that time, was found able 
to maintain the church in its previous harmony and 
prosperity. 

Examining the situation prayerfully and carefully, noting 
the church's need, and the predisposing and exciting cause 
of its condition, I saw that the crisis had come when much 
time and attention must be given to defend this church 
from the envy and molestation of other churches, and 
from the danger to its members which must always lie in 
Christian warfare. At this juncture I recommended that 
the church be dissolved. No sooner were my views made 
known, than the proper measures were adopted to carry 
them out, the votes passing without a dissenting voice. 

This measure was immediately followed by a great re- 
vival of mutual love, prosperity, and spiritual power. 

The history of that hour holds this true record. Add- 
ing to its ranks and influence, this spiritually organized 



COLLEGE AND CHURCH 45 

Church of Christ, Scientist, in Boston, still goes on. A 
new light broke in upon it, and more beautiful became 
the garments of her who " bringeth good tidings, that pub- 
lisheth peace." 

Despite the prosperity of my church, it was learned 
that material organization has its value and peril, and that 
organization is requisite only in the earliest periods in 
Christian history. After this material form of cohesion 
and fellowship has accomplished its end, continued organi- 
zation retards spiritual growth, and should be laid off, — 
even as the corporeal organization deemed requisite in 
the first stages of mortal existence is finally laid off, in 
order to gain spiritual freedom and supremacy. 

From careful observation and experience came my clue 
to the uses and abuses of organization. Therefore, in ac- 
cord with my special request, followed that noble, un- 
precedented action of the Christian Scientist Association 
connected with my College when dissolving that organiza- 
tion, — in forgiving enemies, returning good for evil, in 
following Jesus' command, "Whosoever shall smite thee 
on thy right cheek, turn to him the other also." I saw 
these fruits of Spirit, long-suffering and temperance, ful- 
fil the law of Christ in righteousness. I also saw that 
Christianity has withstood less the temptation of popularity 
than of persecution. 



46 RETROSPECTION AND INTROSPECTION 
"FEED MY SHEEP' ' 

Lines penned when I was pastor of the Church of Christ, Scien- 
tist, in Boston. 

SHEPHERD, show me how to go 
O'er the hillside steep, 
How to gather, how to sow, — 

How to feed Thy sheep; 
I will listen for Thy voice, 
Lest my footsteps stray; 
I will follow and rejoice 
All the rugged way. 

Thou wilt bind the stubborn will, 

Wound the callous breast, 
Make self-righteousness be still, 

Break earth's stupid rest. 
Strangers on a barren shore, 

Lab'ring long and lone, 
We would enter by the door, 

And Thou know'st Thine own. 

So, when day grows dark and cold, 

Tear or triumph harms, 
Lead Thy lambkins to the fold, 

Take them in Thine arms; 
Feed the hungry, heal the heart, 

Till the morning's beam; 
White as wool, ere they depart, 

Shepherd, wash them clean. 



COLLEGE CLOSED 

THE apprehension of what has been, and must be, the 
final outcome of material organization, which wars 
with Love's spiritual compact, caused me to dread the 
unprecedented popularity of my College. Students from 
all over our continent, and from Europe, were flooding 
the school. At this time there were over three hundred 
applications from persons desiring to enter the College, 
and applicants were rapidly increasing. Example had 
shown the dangers arising from being placed on earthly 
pinnacles, and Christian Science shuns whatever involves 
material means for the promotion of spiritual ends. 

In view of all this, a meeting was called of the Board 
of Directors of my College, who, being informed of 
my intentions, unanimously voted that the school be 
discontinued. 

A Primary class student, richly imbued with the spirit 
of Christ, is a better healer and teacher than a Normal 
class student who partakes less of God's love. After hav- 
ing received instructions in a Primary class from me, or 
a loyal student, and afterwards studied thoroughly Science 
and Health, a student can enter upon the gospel work of 
teaching Christian Science, and so fulfil the command of 
Christ. But before entering this field of labor he must 
have studied the latest editions of my works, be a good 
Bible scholar and a consecrated Christian. 

47 



48 RETROSPECTION AND INTROSPECTION 

The Massachusetts Metaphysical College drew its 
breath from me, but I was yearning for retirement. The 
question was, Who else could sustain this institute, under 
all that was aimed at its vital purpose, the establishment 
of genuine Christian Science healing? My conscientious 
scruples about diplomas, the recent experience of the 
church fresh in my thoughts, and the growing conviction 
that every one should build on his own foundation, sub- 
ject to the one builder and maker, God, — all these con- 
siderations moved me to close my flourishing school, and 
the following resolutions were passed: — 

At a special meeting of the Board of the Metaphysical 
College Corporation, Oct. 29, 1889, the following are some 
of the resolutions which were presented and passed 
unanimously : — 

Whereas, The Massachusetts Metaphysical College, 
chartered in January, 1881, for medical purposes, to give 
instruction in scientific methods of mental healing on a purely 
practical basis, to impart a thorough understanding of meta- 
physics, to restore health, hope, and harmony to man, — has 
fulfilled its high and noble destiny, and sent to all parts of our 
country, and into foreign lands, students instructed in Chris- 
tian Science Mind-healing, to meet the demand of the age for 
something higher than physic or drugging; and 

Whereas, The material organization was, in the beginning 
in this institution, like the baptism of Jesus, of which he said, 
" Suffer it to be so now," though the teaching was a purely 
spiritual and scientific impartation of Truth, whose Christly 
spirit has led to higher ways, means, and understanding, — the 
President, the Rev. Mary B. G. Eddy, at the height of pros- 



COLLEGE CLOSED 49 

perity in the institution, which yields a large income, is willing 
to sacrifice all for the advancement of the world in Truth and 
Love; and 

Whereas, Other institutions for instruction in Christian 
Science, which are working out their periods of organization, 
will doubtless follow the example of the Alma Mater after 
having accomplished the worthy purpose for which they were 
organized, and the hour has come wherein the great need is 
for more of the spirit instead of the letter, and Science and 
Health is adapted to work this result; and 

Whereas, The fundamental principle for growth in Chris- 
tian Science is spiritual formation first, last, and always, while 
in human growth material organization is first; and 

Whereas, Mortals must learn to lose their estimate 
of the powers that are not ordained of God, and attain 
the bliss of loving unselfishly, working patiently, and con- 
quering all that is unlike Christ and the example he gave; 
therefore 

Resolved, That we thank the State for its charter, which is 
the only one ever granted to a legal college for teaching the 
Science of Mind-healing; that we thank the public for its 
liberal patronage. And everlasting gratitude is due to the 
President, for her great and noble work, which we believe 
will prove a healing for the nations, and bring all men to a 
knowledge of the true God, uniting them in one common 
brotherhood. 

After due deliberation and earnest discussion it was unani- 
mously voted : That as all debts of the corporation have been 
paid, it is deemed best to dissolve this corporation, and the 
same is hereby dissolved. 

C. A. Frye, Clerk. 



50 RETROSPECTION AND INTROSPECTION 

When God impelled me to set a price on my instruction 
in Christian Science Mind-healing, I could think of no 
financial equivalent for an impartation of a knowledge of 
that divine power which heals; but I was led to name three 
hundred dollars as the price for each pupil in one course 
of lessons at my College, — a startling sum for tuition 
lasting barely three weeks. This amount greatly troubled 
me. I shrank from asking it, but was finally led, by a 
strange providence, to accept this fee. 

God has since shown me, in multitudinous ways, the 
wisdom of this decision; and I beg disinterested people 
to ask my loyal students if they consider three hundred 
dollars any real equivalent for my instruction during 
twelve half-days, or even in half as many lessons. Never- 
theless, my list of indigent charity scholars is very large, 
and I have had as many as seventeen in one class. 

Loyal students speak with delight of their pupilage, 
and of what it has done for them, and for others through 
them. By loyalty in students I mean this, — allegiance 
to God, subordination of the human to the divine, stead- 
fast justice, and strict adherence to divine Truth and 
Love. 

I see clearly that students in Christian Science should, 
at present, continue to organize churches, schools, and 
associations for the furtherance and unfolding of Truth, 
and that my necessity is not necessarily theirs; but it was 
the Father's opportunity for furnishing a new rule of order 
in divine Science, and the blessings which arose therefrom. 
Students are not environed with such obstacles as were 
encountered in the beginning of pioneer work. 



COLLEGE CLOSED 51 

In December, 1889, 1 gave a lot of land in Boston to my 
student, Mr. Ira O. Knapp of Roslindale, — valued in 
1892 at about twenty thousand dollars, and rising in value, 
— to be appropriated for the erection, and building on 
the premises thereby conveyed, of a church edifice to be 
used as a temple for Christian Science worship. 



GENERAL ASSOCIATIONS, AND OUR 
MAGAZINE 

FOR many successive years I have endeavored to find 
new ways and means for the promotion and expan- 
sion of scientific Mind-healing, seeking to broaden its 
channels and, if possible, to build a hedge round about 
it that should shelter its perfections from the contaminat- 
ing influences of those who have a small portion of its 
letter and less of its spirit. At the same time I have 
worked to provide a home for every true seeker and honest 
worker in this vineyard of Truth. 

To meet the broader wants of humanity, and provide 
folds for the sheep that were without shepherds, I sug- 
gested to my students, in 1886, the propriety of forming 
a National Christian Scientist Association. This was 
immediately done, and delegations from the Christian 
Scientist Association of the Massachusetts Metaphysical 
College, and from branch associations in other States, 
met in general convention at New York City, February 
11, 1886. 

The first official organ of the Christian Scientist Asso- 
ciation was called Journal of Christian Science. I started 
it, April, 1883, as editor and publisher. 

To the National Christian Scientist Association, at its 
meeting in Cleveland, Ohio, June, 1889, I sent a letter, 

52 



GENERAL ASSOCIATIONS 53 

presenting to its loyal members The Christian Science 
Journal, as it was now called, and the funds belonging 
thereto. This monthly magazine had been made success- 
ful and prosperous under difficult circumstances, and was 
designed to bear aloft the standard of genuine Christian 
Science. 



FAITH-CURE 

IT is often asked, Why are faith-cures sometimes more 
speedy than some of the cures wrought through Chris- 
tian Scientists? Because faith is belief, and not under- 
standing; and it is easier to believe, than to understand 
spiritual Truth. It demands less cross-bearing, self- 
renunciation, and divine Science to admit the claims of 
the corporeal senses and appeal to God for relief through 
a humanized conception of His power, than to deny these 
claims and learn the divine way, — drinking Jesus' cup, 
being baptized with his baptism, gaining the end through 
persecution and purity. 

Millions are believing in God, or good, without bearing 
the fruits of goodness, not having reached its Science. 
Belief is virtually blindness, when it admits Truth with- 
out understanding it. Blind belief cannot say with the 
apostle, " I know whom I have believed/' There is danger 
in this mental state called belief; for if Truth is admitted, 
but not understood, it may be lost, and error may enter 
through this same channel of ignorant belief. The faith- 
cure has devout followers, whose Christian practice is far 
in advance of their theory. 

The work of healing, in the Science of Mind, is the most 
sacred and salutary power which can be wielded. My 
Christian students, impressed with the true sense of the 

54 



FAITH-CURE 55 

great work before them, enter this strait and narrow path, 
and work conscientiously. 

Let us follow the example of Jesus, the master Meta- 
physician, and gain sufficient knowledge of error to destroy 
it with Truth. Evil is not mastered by evil; it can only 
be overcome with good. This brings out the nothingness 
of evil and the eternal somethingness, vindicates the divine 
Principle, and improves the race of Adam. 



FOUNDATION-STONES 

riiHE following ideas of Deity, antagonized by finite 
* theories, doctrines, and hypotheses, I found to be 
demonstrable rules in Christian Science, and that we 
must abide by them. 

Whatever diverges from the one divine Mind, or God, 
— or divides Mind into minds, Spirit into spirits, Soul 
into souls, and Being into beings, — is a misstatement 
of the unerring divine Principle of Science, which inter- 
rupts the meaning of the omnipotence, omniscience, and 
omnipresence of Spirit, and is of human instead of divine 
origin. 

War is waged between the evidences of Spirit and the 
evidences of the five physical senses; and this contest 
must go on until peace be declared by the final triumph 
of Spirit in immutable harmony. Divine Science disclaims 
sin, sickness, and death, on the basis of the omnipotence 
and omnipresence of God, or divine good. 

All consciousness is Mind, and Mind is God. Hence 
there is but one Mind; and that one is the infinite good, 
supplying all Mind by the reflection, not the subdivision, 
of God. Whatever else claims to be mind, or consciousness, 
is untrue. The sun sends forth light, but not suns; so 
God reflects Himself, or Mind, but does not subdivide 
Mind, or good, into minds, good and evil. Divine Sci- 

56 



FOUNDATION-STONES 57 

ence demands mighty wrestlings with mortal beliefs, as 
we sail into the eternal haven over the unfathomable 
sea of possibilities. 

Neither ancient nor modern philosophy furnishes a 
scientific basis for the Science of Mind-healing. Plato 
believed he had a soul, which must be doctored in order 
to heal his body. This would be like correcting the prin- 
ciple of music for the purpose of destroying discord. Prin- 
ciple is right; it is practice that is wrong. Soul is right; 
it is the flesh that is evil. Soul is the synonym of Spirit, 
God; hence there is but one Soul, and that one is infinite. 
If that pagan philosopher had known that physical sense, 
not Soul, causes all bodily ailments, his philosophy would 
have yielded to Science. 

Man shines by borrowed light. He reflects God as 
his Mind, and this reflection is substance, — the substance 
of good. Matter is substance in error, Spirit is substance 
in Truth. 

Evil, or error, is not Mind; but infinite Mind is sufficient 
to supply all manifestations of intelligence. The notion 
of more than one Mind, or Life, is as unsatisfying as it is 
unscientific. All must be of God, and not our own, sepa- 
rated from Him. 

Human systems of philosophy and religion are depart- 
ures from Christian Science. Mistaking divine Principle 
for corporeal personality, ingrafting upon one First Cause 
such opposite effects as good and evil, health and sickness, 
life and death; making mortality the status and rule of 
divinity, — such methods can never reach the perfection 
and demonstration of metaphysical, or Christian Science. 



58 RETROSPECTION AND INTROSPECTION 

Stating the divine Principle, omnipotence (omnis potens), 
and then departing from this statement and taking the 
rule of finite matter, with which to work out the problem 
of infinity or Spirit, — all this is like trying to compensate 
for the absence of omnipotence by a physical, false, and 
finite substitute. 

With our Master, life was not merely a sense of exist- 
ence, but an accompanying sense of power that subdued 
matter and brought to light immortality, insomuch that 
the people "were astonished at his doctrine: for he taught 
them as one having authority, and not as the scribes." 
Life, as defined by Jesus, had no beginning; it was not 
the result of organization, or infused into matter; it was 
Spirit. 



THE GREAT REVELATION 

CHRISTIAN SCIENCE reveals the grand verity, that 
to believe man has a finite and erring mind, and 
consequently a mortal mind and soul and life, is error. 
Scientific terms have no contradictory significations. 

In Science, Life is not temporal, but eternal, without 
beginning or ending. The word Life never means that 
which is the source of death, and of good and evil. Such 
an inference is unscientific. It is like saying that addition 
means subtraction in one instance and addition in an- 
other, and then applying this rule to a demonstration of 
the science of numbers; even as mortals apply finite terms 
to God, in demonstration of infinity. Life is a term used 
to indicate Deity; and every other name for the Supreme 
Being, if properly employed, has the signification of 
Life. Whatever errs is mortal, and is the antipodes of 
Life, or God, and of health and holiness, both in idea 
and demonstration. 

Christian Science reveals Mind, the only living and true 
God, and all that is made by Him, Mind, as harmonious, 
immortal, and spiritual: the five material senses define 
Mind and matter as distinct, but mutually dependent, 
each on the other, for intelligence and existence. Science 
defines man as immortal, as coexistent and coeternal with 
God, as made in His own image and likeness; material 

59 



60 RETROSPECTION AND INTROSPECTION 

sense defines life as something apart from God, beginning 
and ending, and man as very far from the divine likeness. 
Science reveals Life as a complete sphere, as eternal, self- 
existent Mind; material sense defines life as a broken 
sphere, as organized matter, and mind as something sep- 
arate from God. Science reveals Spirit as All, averring 
that there is nothing beside God; material sense says that 
matter, His antipode, is something besides God. Material 
sense adds that the divine Spirit created matter, and that 
matter and evil are as real as Spirit and good. 

Christian Science reveals God and His idea as the All 
and Only. It declares that evil is the absence of good; 
whereas, good is God ever-present, and therefore evil is 
unreal and good is all that is real. Christian Science saith 
to the wave and storm, "Be still," and there is a great 
calm. Material sense asks, in its ignorance of Science, 
"When will the raging of the material elements cease?" 
Science saith to all manner of disease, "Know that God 
is all-power and all-presence, and there is nothing beside 
Him;" and the sick are healed. Material sense saith, 
"Oh, when will my sufferings cease? Where is God? 
Sickness is something besides Him, which He cannot, or 
does not, heal." 

Christian Science is the only sure basis of harmony. 
Material sense contradicts Science, for matter and its 
so-called organizations take no cognizance of the spir- 
itual facts of the universe, or of the real man and God. 
Christian Science declares that there is but one Truth, 
Life, Love, but one Spirit, Mind, Soul. Any attempt 
to divide these arises from the fallibility of sense, from 



THE GREAT REVELATION 61 

mortal man's ignorance, from enmity to God and divine 
Science. 

Christian Science declares that sickness is a belief, a 
latent fear, made manifest on the body in different forms 
of fear or disease. This fear is formed unconsciously in 
the silent thought, as when you awaken from sleep and 
feel ill, experiencing the effect of a fear whose existence 
you do not realize; but if you fall asleep, actually con- 
scious of the truth of Christian Science, — namely, that 
man's harmony is no more to be invaded than the rhythm 
of the universe, — you cannot awake in fear or suffering 
of any sort. 

Science saith to fear, "You are the cause of all sick- 
ness; but you are a self -constituted falsity, — you are 
darkness, nothingness. You are without 'hope, and with- 
out God in the world/ You do not exist, and have no 
right to exist, for ' perfect Love casteth out fear." 

God is everywhere. " There is no speech nor language, 
where their voice is not heard;" and this voice is Truth 
that destroys error and Love that casts out fear. 

Christian Science reveals the fact that, if suffering exists, 
it is in the mortal mind only, for matter has no sensation 
and cannot suffer. 

If you rule out every sense of disease and suffering from 
mortal mind, it cannot be found in the body. 

Posterity will have the right to demand that Christian 
Science be stated and demonstrated in its godliness and 
grandeur, — that however little be taught or learned, that 
little shall be right. Let there be milk for babes, but let 
not the milk be adulterated. Unless this method be pur- 



62 RETROSPECTION AND INTROSPECTION 

sued, the Science of Christian healing will again be lost, 
and human suffering will increase. 

Test Christian Science by its effect on society, and you 
will find that the views here set forth — as to the illusion 
of sin, sickness, and death — bring forth better fruits of 
health, righteousness, and Life, than a belief in their reality 
has ever done. A demonstration of the unreality of evil 
destroys evil. 



SIN, SINNER, AND ECCLESIASTICISM 

T X THY do Christian Scientists say God and His idea 
* ▼ are the only realities, and then insist on the need 
of healing sickness and sin? Because Christian Science 
heals sin as it heals sickness, by establishing the recogni- 
tion that God is All, and there is none beside Him, — that 
all is good, and there is in reality no evil, neither sickness 
nor sin. We attack the sinner's belief in the pleasure of 
sin, alias the reality of sin, which makes him a sinner, in 
order to destroy this belief and save him from sin; and 
we attack the belief of the sick in the reality of sickness, 
in order to heal them. When we deny the authority of 
sin, we begin to sap it; for this denunciation must precede 
its destruction. 

God is good, hence goodness is something, for it rep- 
resents God, the Life of man. Its opposite, nothing, 
named evil, is nothing but a conspiracy against man's 
Life and goodness. Do you not feel bound to expose this 
conspiracy, and so to save man from it? Whosoever 
covers iniquity becomes accessory to it. Sin, as a claim, 
is more dangerous than sickness, more subtle, more diffi- 
cult to heal. 

St. Augustine once said, "The devil is but the ape of 
God." Sin is worse than sickness; but recollect that it 
encourages sin to say, "There is no sin," and leave the 
subject there. 

63 



64 RETROSPECTION AND INTROSPECTION 

Sin ultimates in sinner, and in this sense they are one. 
You cannot separate sin from the sinner, nor the sinner 
from his sin. The sin is the sinner, and vice versa, for 
such is the unity of evil; and together both sinner and sin 
will be destroyed by the supremacy of good. This, how- 
ever, does not annihilate man, for to efface sin, alias the 
sinner, brings to light, makes apparent, the real man, 
even God's "image and likeness. " Need it be said that 
any opposite theory is heterodox to divine Science, which 
teaches that good is equally one and all, even as the oppo- 
site claim of evil is one. 

In Christian Science the fact is made obvious that the 
sinner and the sin are alike simply nothingness; and this 
view is supported by the Scripture, where the Psalmist 
saith: "He shall go to the generation of his fathers; they 
shall never see light. Man that is in honor, and under- 
standeth not, is like the beasts that perish/' God's ways 
and works and thoughts have never changed, either in 
Principle or practice. 

Since there is in belief an illusion termed sin, which 
must be met and mastered, we classify sin, sickness, and 
death as illusions. They are supposititious claims of 
error; and error being a false claim, they are no claims 
at all. It is scientific to abide in conscious harmony, in 
health-giving, deathless Truth and Love. To do this, 
mortals must first open their eyes to all the illusive forms, 
methods, and subtlety of error, in order that the illusion, 
error, may be destroyed; if this is not done, mortals will 
become the victims of error. 

If evangelical churches refuse fellowship with the 



SIN, SINNER, AND ECCLESIASTICISM 65 

Church of Christ, Scientist, or with Christian Science, 
they must rest their opinions of Truth and Love on 
the evidences of the physical senses, rather than on 
the teaching and practice of Jesus, or the works of the 
Spirit. 

Ritualism and dogma lead to self-righteousness and 
bigotry, which freeze out the spiritual element. Pharisa- 
ism killeth; Spirit giveth Life. The odors of persecution, 
tobacco, and alcohol are not the sweet-smelling savor of 
Truth and Love. Feasting the senses, gratification of 
appetite and passion, have no warrant in the gospel or 
the Decalogue. Mortals must take up the cross if they 
would follow Christ, and worship the Father "in spirit 
and in truth." 

The Jewish religion was not spiritual; hence Jesus 
denounced it. If the religion of to-day is constituted of 
such elements as of old ruled Christ out of the synagogues, 
it will continue to avoid whatever follows the example of 
our Lord and prefers Christ to creed. Christian Science 
is the pure evangelic truth. It accords with the trend and 
tenor of Christ's teaching and example, while it demon- 
strates the power of Christ as taught in the four Gospels. 
Truth, casting out evils and healing the sick; Love, ful- 
filling the law and keeping man unspotted from the world, 
— these practical manifestations of Christianity constitute 
the only evangelism, and they need no creed. 

As well expect to determine, without a telescope, the 
magnitude and distance of the stars, as to expect to obtain 
health, harmony, and holiness through an unspiritual and 
unhealing religion. Christianity reveals God as ever- 



66 RETROSPECTION AND INTROSPECTION 

present Truth and Love, to be utilized in healing the sick, 
in casting out error,, in raising the dead. 

Christian Science gives vitality to religion, which is no 
longer buried in materiality. It raises men from a material 
sense into the spiritual understanding and scientific demon- 
stration of God. 



THE HUMAN CONCEPT 

SIN existed as a false claim before the human concept 
of sin was formed; hence one's concept of error is 
not the whole of error. The human thought does not 
constitute sin, but vice versa, sin constitutes the human or 
physical concept. 

Sin is both concrete and abstract. Sin was, and is, the 
lying supposition that life, substance, and intelligence are 
both material and spiritual, and yet are separate from 
God. The first iniquitous manifestation of sin was a 
finity. The finite was self-arrayed against the infinite, 
the mortal against immortality, and a sinner was the 
antipode of God. 

Silencing self, alias rising above corporeal personality, 
is what reforms the sinner and destroys sin. In the ratio 
that the testimony of material personal sense ceases, sin 
diminishes, until the false claim called sin is finally lost 
for lack of witness. 

The sinner created neither himself nor sin, but sin 
created the sinner; that is, error made its man mortal, 
and this mortal was the image and likeness of evil, not of 
good. Therefore the lie was, and is, collective as well as 
individual. It was in no way contingent on Adam's 
thought, but supposititiously self -created. In the words 
of our Master, it, the "devil" {alias evil), "was a liar, and 
the father of it." 

67 



68 RETROSPECTION AND INTROSPECTION 

This mortal material concept was never a creator, al- 
though as a serpent it claimed to originate in the name of 
"the Lord," or good, — original evil; second, in the name 
of human concept, it claimed to beget the offspring of evil, 
alias an evil offspring. However, the human concept 
never was, neither indeed can be, the father of man. 
Even the spiritual idea, or ideal man, is not a parent, 
though he reflects the infinity of good. The great differ- 
ence between these opposites is, that the human material 
concept is unreal, and the divine concept or idea is spiritu- 
ally real. One is false, while the other is true. One is 
temporal, but the other is eternal. 

Our Master instructed his students to "call no man 
your father upon the earth: for one is your Father, which 
is in heaven." (Matt, xxiii. 9.) 

Science and Health, the textbook of Christian Science, 
treats of the human concept, and the transference of 
thought, as follows : — 

"How can matter originate or transmit mind? We 
answer that it cannot. Darkness and doubt encompass 
thought, so long as it bases creation on materiality" 
(p. 551). 

"In reality there is no mortal mind, and consequently 
no transference of mortal thought and will-power. Life 
and being are of God. In Christian Science, man can do 
no harm, for scientific thoughts are true thoughts, passing 
from God to man" (pp. 103, 104). 

"Man is the offspring of Spirit. The beautiful, good, 
and pure constitute his ancestry. His origin is not, like 



THE HUMAN CONCEPT 69 

that of mortals, in brute instinct, nor does he pass through 
material conditions prior to reaching intelligence. Spirit 
is his primitive and ultimate source of being; God is his 
Father, and Life is the law of his being" (p. 63). 

"The parent of all human discord was the Adam- 
dream, the deep sleep, in which originated the delusion 
that life and intelligence proceeded from and passed into 
matter. This pantheistic error, or so-called serpent, in- 
sists still upon the opposite of Truth, saying, 'Ye shall be 
as gods;' that is, I will make error as real and eternal as 
Truth. . . . ' I will put spirit into what I call matter, and 
matter shall seem to have life as much as God, Spirit, 
who is the only Life.' This error has proved itself to be 
error. Its life is found to be not Life, but only a transient, 
false sense of an existence which ends in death" (pp. 306, 
307). 

"When will the error of believing that there is life in 
matter, and that sin, sickness, and death are creations of 
God, be unmasked? When will it be understood that 
matter has no intelligence, life, nor sensation, and that 
the opposite belief is the prolific source of all suffering? 
God created all through Mind, and made all perfect and 
eternal. Where then is the necessity for recreation or 
procreation?" (p. 205). 

"Above error's awful din, blackness, and chaos, the 
voice of Truth still calls: 'Adam, where art thou? Con- 
sciousness, where art thou? Art thou dwelling in the be- 
lief that mind is in matter, and that evil is mind, or art 
thou in the living faith that there is and can be but one 
Gt)d, and keeping His commandment?'" (pp. 307, 308). 



70 RETROSPECTION AND INTROSPECTION 

" Mortal mind inverts the true likeness, and confers 
animal names and natures upon its own misconceptions. 
Ignorant of the origin and operations of mortal mind, — • 
that is, ignorant of itself, — this so-called mind puts forth 
its own qualities, and claims God as their author; . . . 
usurps the deific prerogatives and is an attempted in- 
fringement on infinity" (pp. 512, 513). 

We do not question the authenticity of the Scriptural 
narrative of the Virgin-mother and Bethlehem babe, and 
the Messianic mission of Christ Jesus; but in our time 
no Christian Scientist will give chimerical wings to his 
imagination, or advance speculative theories as to the 
recurrence of such events. 

No person can take the individual place of the Virgin 
Mary. No person can compass or fulfil the individual 
mission of Jesus of Nazareth. No person can take the 
place of the author of Science and Health, the Discoverer 
and Founder of Christian Science. Each individual must 
fill his own niche in time and eternity. 

The second appearing of Jesus is, unquestionably, the 
spiritual advent of the advancing idea of God, as in Chris- 
tian Science. 

And the scientific ultimate of this God-idea must be, 
will be, forever individual, incorporeal, and infinite, even 
the reflection, "image and likeness," of the infinite God. 

The right teacher of Christian Science lives the truth he 
teaches. Preeminent among men, he virtually stands at 
the head of all sanitary, civil, moral, and religious reform. 
Such a post of duty, unpierced by vanity, exalts a mortal 



THE HUMAN CONCEPT 71 

beyond human praise, or monuments which weigh dust, 
and humbles him with the tax it raises on calamity to open 
the gates of heaven. It is not the forager on others' wis- 
dom that God thus crowns, but he who is obedient to the 
divine command, "Render to Caesar the things that are 
Caesar's, and to God the things that are God's." 

Great temptations beset an ignorant or an unprincipled 
mind-practice in opposition to the straight and narrow 
path of Christian Science. Promiscuous mental treat- 
ment, without the consent or knowledge of the individual 
treated, is an error of much magnitude. People unaware 
of the indications of mental treatment, know not what is 
affecting them, and thus may be robbed of their individual 
rights, — freedom of choice and self-government. Who is 
willing to be subjected to such an influence? Ask the un- 
bridled mind-manipulator if he would consent to this; and 
if not, then he is knowingly transgressing Christ's com- 
mand. He who secretly manipulates mind without the 
permission of man or God, is not dealing justly and 
loving mercy, according to pure and undefiled religion. 

Sinister and selfish motives entering into mental practice 
are dangerous incentives; they proceed from false con- 
victions and a fatal ignorance. These are the tares grow- 
ing side by side with the wheat, that must be recognized, 
and uprooted, before the wheat can be garnered and 
Christian Science demonstrated. 

Secret mental efforts to obtain help from one who is 
unaware of this attempt, demoralizes the person who does 
this, the same as other forms of stealing, and will end in 
destroying health and morals. 



72 RETROSPECTION AND INTROSPECTION 

In the practice of Christian Science one cannot impart 
a mental influence that hazards another's happiness, nor 
interfere with the rights of the individual. To disregard 
the welfare of others is contrary to the law of God; there- 
fore it deteriorates one's ability to do good, to benefit 
himself and mankind. 

The Psalmist vividly portrays the result of secret faults, 
presumptuous sins, and self-deception, in these words: 
"How are they brought into desolation, as in a moment! 
They are utterly consumed with terrors." 



PERSONALITY 

THE immortal man being spiritual, individual, and 
eternal, his mortal opposite must be material, cor- 
poreal, and temporal. Physical personality is finite; but 
God is infinite. He is without materiality, without finite- 
ness of form or Mind. 

Limitations are put off in proportion as the fleshly 
nature disappears and man is found in the reflection of 
Spirit. 

This great fact leads into profound depths. The mate- 
rial human concept grew beautifully less as I floated into 
more spiritual latitudes and purer realms of thought. 

From that hour personal corporeality became less to 
me than it is to people who fail to appreciate individual 
character. I endeavored to lift thought above physical 
personality, or selfhood in matter, to man's spiritual in- 
dividuality in God, — in the true Mind, where sensible 
evil is lost in supersensible good. This is the only way 
whereby the false personality is laid off. 

He who clings to personality, or perpetually warns you 
of "personality/' wrongs it, or terrifies people over it, 
and is the sure victim of his own corporeality. Constantly 
to scrutinize physical personality, or accuse people of being 
unduly personal, is like the sick talking sickness. Such 
errancy betrays a violent and egotistical personality, 

73 



74 RETROSPECTION AND INTROSPECTION 

increases one's sense of corporeality, and begets a fear of 
the senses and a perpetually egotistical sensibility. 

He who does this is ignorant of the meaning of the word 
personality, and defines it by his own corpus sine pectore 
(soulless body), and fails to distinguish the individual, or 
real man from the false sense of corporeality, or egotistic 
self. 

My own corporeal personality afHicteth me not wittingly ; 
for I desire never to think of it, and it cannot think 
of me. 



PLAGIARISM 

THE various forms of book-borrowing without credit 
spring from this ill-concealed question in mortal 
mind, Who shall be greatest? This error violates the 
law given by Moses, it tramples upon Jesus' Sermon 
on the Mount, it does violence to the ethics of Christian 
Science. 

Why withhold my name, while appropriating my lan- 
guage and ideas, but give credit when citing from the works 
of other authors? 

Life and its ideals are inseparable, and one's writings 
on ethics, and demonstration of Truth, are not, cannot be, 
understood or taught by those who persistently misunder- 
stand or misrepresent the author. Jesus said, " For there 
is no man which shall do a miracle in my name, that can 
lightly speak evil of me." 

If one's spiritual ideal is comprehended and loved, the 
borrower from it is embraced in the author's own mental 
mood, and is therefore honest The Science of Mind ex- 
cludes opposites, and rests on unity. 

It is proverbial that dishonesty retards spiritual growth 
and strikes at the heart of Truth. If a student at Harvard 
College has studied a textbook written by his teacher, is 
he entitled, when he leaves the University, to write out as 
his own the substance of this textbook? There is no war- 
rant in common law and no permission in the gospel 

75 



76 RETROSPECTION AND INTROSPECTION 

for plagiarizing an author's ideas and their words. 
Christian Science is not copyrighted; nor would pro- 
tection by copyright be requisite, if mortals obeyed 
God's law of manright. A student can write volumi- 
nous works on Science without trespassing, if he writes 
honestly, and he cannot dishonestly compose Christian 
Science. The Bible is not stolen, though it is cited, 
and quoted deferentially. 

Thoughts touched with the Spirit and Word of Christian 
Science gravitate naturally toward Truth. Therefore the 
mind to which this Science was revealed must have risen 
to the altitude which perceived a light beyond what others 
saw. 

The spiritually minded meet on the stairs which lead up 
to spiritual love. This affection, so far from being per- 
sonal worship, fulfils the law of Love which Paul enjoined 
upon the Galatians. This is the Mind "which was also 
in Christ Jesus," and knows no material limitations. It is 
the unity of good and bond of perfectness. This just affec- 
tion serves to constitute the Mind-healer a wonder-worker, 
— as of old, on the Pentecost Day, when the disciples were 
of one accord. 

He who gains the God-crowned summit of Christian 
Science never abuses the corporeal personality, but up- 
lifts it. He thinks of every one in his real quality, and 
sees each mortal in an impersonal depict. 

I have long remained silent on a growing evil in plagi- 
arism; but if I do not insist upon the strictest observance 
of moral law and order in Christian Scientists, I become 



PLAGIARISM 77 

responsible, as a teacher, for laxity in discipline and law- 
lessness in literature. Pope was right in saying, "An 
honest man's the noblest work of God;" and Ingersoll's 
repartee has its moral: "An honest God's the noblest 
work of man." 



ADMONITION 

THE neophyte in Christian Science acts like a diseased 
physique, — being too fast or too slow. He is in- 
clined to do either too much or too little. In healing and 
teaching the student has not yet achieved the entire wis- 
dom of Mind-practice. The textual explanation of this 
practice is complete in Science and Health; and scientific 
practice makes perfect, for it is governed by its Principle, 
and not by human opinions; but carnal and sinister 
motives, entering into this practice, will prevent the 
demonstration of Christian Science. 

I recommend students not to read so-called scientific 
works, antagonistic to Christian Science, which advocate 
materialistic systems; because such works and words be- 
cloud the right sense of metaphysical Science. 

The rules of Mind-healing are wholly Christlike and 
spiritual. Therefore the adoption of a worldly policy or a 
resort to subterfuge in the statement of the Science of 
Mind-healing, or any name given to it other than Christian 
Science, or an attempt to demonstrate the facts of this 
Science other than is stated in Science and Health — is a 
departure from the Science of Mind-healing. To becloud 
mortals, or for yourself to hide from God, is to conspire 
against the blessings otherwise conferred, against your 
own success and final happiness, against the progress of 

78 



ADMONITION 79 

the human race as well as against honest metaphysical 
theory and practice. 

Not by the hearing of the ear is spiritual truth learned 
and loved; nor cometh this apprehension from the ex- 
periences of others. We glean spiritual harvests from our 
own material losses. In this consuming heat false images 
are effaced from the canvas of mortal mind; and thus does 
the material pigment beneath fade into invisibility. 

The signs for the wayfarer in divine Science lie in meek- 
ness, in unselfish motives and acts, in shuffling off scholastic 
rhetoric, in ridding the thought of effete doctrines, in the 
purification of the affections and desires. 

Dishonesty, envy, and mad ambition are " lusts of the 
flesh/' which uproot the germs of growth in Science and 
leave the inscrutable problem of being unsolved. Through 
the channels of material sense, of worldly policy, pomp, 
and pride, cometh no success in Truth. If beset with mis- 
guided emotions, we shall be stranded on the quicksands 
of worldly commotion, and practically come short of the 
wisdom requisite for teaching and demonstrating the 
victory over self and sin. 

Be temperate in thought, word, and deed. Meekness 
and temperance are the jewels of Love, set in wisdom. 
Restrain untempered zeal. " Learn to labor and to wait." 
Of old the children of Israel were saved by patient waiting. 

"The kingdom of heaven suffereth violence, and the 
violent take it by force!" said Jesus. Therefore are 
its spiritual gates not captured, nor its golden streets 
invaded. 

We recognize this kingdom, the reign of harmony 



80 RETROSPECTION AND INTROSPECTION 

within us, by an unselfish affection or love, for this is the 
pledge of divine good and the insignia of heaven. This 
also is proverbial, that though eternal justice be graciously 
gentle, yet it may seem severe. 

For whom the Lord loveth He chasteneth, 
And scourgeth every son whom He receiveth. 

As the poets in different languages have expressed it: — 

Though the mills of God grind slowly, 

Yet they grind exceeding small; 
Though with patience He stands waiting, 

With exactness grinds He all. 

Though the divine rebuke is effectual to the pulling 
down of sin's strongholds, it may stir the human heart to 
resist Truth, before this heart becomes obediently recep- 
tive of the heavenly discipline. If the Christian Scientist 
recognize the mingled sternness and gentleness which 
permeate justice and Love, he will not scorn the timely re- 
proof, but will so absorb it that this warning will be within 
him a spring, welling up into unceasing spiritual rise and 
progress. Patience and obedience win the golden scholar- 
ship of experimental tuition. 

The kindly shepherd of the East carries his lambs in his 
arms to the sheepcot, but the older sheep pass into the fold 
under his compelling rod. He who sees the door and turns 
away from it, is guilty, while innocence stray eth yearningly. 

There are no greater miracles known to earth than per- 
fection and an unbroken friendship. We love our friends, 
but ofttimes we lose them in proportion to our affection. 
The sacrifices made for others are not infrequently met by 



ADMONITION 81 

envy, ingratitude, and enmity, which smite the heart and 
threaten to paralyze its beneficence. The unavailing tear 
is shed both for the living and the dead. 

Nothing except sin, in the students themselves, can 
separate them from me. Therefore we should guard 
thought and action, keeping them in accord with Christ, 
and our friendship will surely continue. 

The letter of the law of God, separated from its spirit, 
tends to demoralize mortals, and must be corrected by a 
diviner sense of liberty and light. The spirit of Truth ex- 
tinguishes false thinking, feeling, and acting; and falsity 
must thus decay, ere spiritual sense, affectional conscious- 
ness, and genuine goodness become so apparent as to be 
well understood. 

After the supreme advent of Truth in the heart, there 
comes an overwhelming sense of error's vacuity, of the 
blunders which arise from wrong apprehension. The en- 
lightened heart loathes error, and casts it aside; or else 
that heart is consciously untrue to the light, faithless to 
itself and to others, and so sinks into deeper darkness. 
Said Jesus: "If the light that is in thee be darkness, how 
great is that darkness!" and Shakespeare puts this pious 
counsel into a father's mouth : — 

This above all: To thine own self be true; 
And it must follow, as the night the day, 
Thou canst not then be false to any man. 

A realization of the shifting scenes of human happiness, 
and of the frailty of mortal anticipations, — such as first 
led me to the feet of Christian Science, — seems to be requi- 
site at every stage of advancement. Though our first les- 



82 RETROSPECTION AND INTROSPECTION 

sons are changed, modified, broadened, yet their core is 
constantly renewed; as the law of the chord remains 
unchanged, whether we are dealing with a simple Latour 
exercise or with the vast Wagner Trilogy. 

A general rule is, that my students should not allow their 
movements to be controlled by other students, even if they 
are teachers and practitioners of the same blessed faith. 
The exception to this rule should be very rare. 

The widest power and strongest growth have always 
been attained by those loyal students who rest on divine 
Principle for guidance, not on themselves; and who locate 
permanently in one section, and adhere to the orderly 
methods herein delineated. 

At this period my students should locate in large cities, 
in order to do the greatest good to the greatest number, and 
therein abide. The population of our principal cities is 
ample to supply many practitioners, teachers, and preachers 
with work. This fact interferes in no way with the pros- 
perity of each worker; rather does it represent an accumu- 
lation of power on his side which promotes the ease and 
welfare of the workers. Their liberated capacities of mind 
enable Christian Scientists to consummate much good or 
else evil; therefore their examples either excel or fall short 
of other religionists; and they must be found dwelling 
together in harmony, if even they compete with ecclesias- 
tical fellowship and friendship. 

It is often asked which revision of Science and Health is 
the best. The arrangement of my last revision, in 1890, 
makes the subject-matter clearer than any previous edition, 
and it is therefore better adapted to spiritualize thought 



ADMONITION 83 

and elucidate scientific healing and teaching. It has 
already been proven that this volume is accomplishing the 
divine purpose to a remarkable degree. The wise Chris- 
tian Scientist will commend students and patients to the 
teachings of this book, and the healing efficacy thereof, 
rather than try to centre their interest on himself. 

Students whom I have taught are seldom benefited by 
the teachings of other students, for scientific foundations 
are already laid in their minds which ought not to be tam- 
pered with. Also, they are prepared to receive the infinite 
instructions afforded by the Bible and my books, which 
mislead no one and are their best guides. 

The student may mistake in his conception of Truth, and 
this error, in an honest heart, is sure to be corrected. But 
if he misinterprets the text to his pupils, and communicates, 
even unintentionally, his misconception of Truth, there- 
after he will find it more difficult to rekindle his own light 
or to enlighten them. Hence, as a rule, the student should 
explain only Recapitulation, the chapter for the class-room, 
and leave Science and Health to God's daily interpretation. 

Christian Scientists should take their textbook into the 
schoolroom the same as other teachers; they should ask 
questions from it, and be answered according to it, — occa- 
sionally reading aloud from the book to corroborate what 
they teach. It is also highly important that their pupils 
study each lesson before the recitation. 

That these essential points are ever omitted, is anoma- 
lous, when we consider the necessity of thoroughly under- 
standing Science, and the present liability of deviating 
from absolute Christian Science. 



84 RETROSPECTION AND INTROSPECTION 

Centuries will intervene before the statement of the inex- 
haustible topics of Science and Health is sufficiently under- 
stood to be fully demonstrated. 

The teacher himself should continue to study this text- 
book, and to spiritualize his own thoughts and human life 
from this open fount of Truth and Love. 

He who sees clearly and enlightens other minds most 
readily, keeps his own lamp trimmed and burning. 
Throughout his entire explanations he strictly adheres to 
the teachings in the chapter on Recapitulation. When 
closing the class, each member should own a copy of 
Science and Health, and continue to study and assimilate 
this inexhaustible subject — Christian Science. 

The opinions of men cannot be substituted for God's 
revelation. In times past, arrogant pride, in attempting to 
steady the ark of Truth, obscured even the power and 
glory of the Scriptures, — to which Science and Health is 
the Key. 

That teacher does most for his students who divests him- 
self most of pride and self, and by reason thereof is able to 
empty his students' minds of error, that they may be filled 
with Truth. Thus doing, posterity will call him blessed, 
and the tired tongue of history be enriched. 

The less the teacher personally controls other minds, and 
the more he trusts them to the divine Truth and Love, the 
better it will be for both teacher and student. 

A teacher should take charge only of his own pupils and 
patients, and of those who voluntarily place themselves 
under his direction; he should avoid leaving his own regu- 
lar institute or place of labor, or expending his labor where 



ADMONITION 85 

there are other teachers who should be specially responsible 
for doing their own work well. 

Teachers of Christian Science will find it advisable to 
band together their students into associations, to continue 
the organization of churches, and at present they can 
employ any other organic operative method that may 
commend itself as useful to the Cause and beneficial to 
mankind. 

Of this also rest assured, that books and teaching are but 
a ladder let down from the heaven of Truth and Love, upon 
which angelic thoughts ascend and descend, bearing on 
their pinions of light the Christ-spirit. 

Guard yourselves against the subtly hidden suggestion 
that the Son of man will be glorified, or humanity benefited, 
by any deviation from the order prescribed by supernal 
grace. Seek to occupy no position whereto you do not feel 
that God ordains you. Never forsake your post without 
due deliberation and light, but always wait for God's finger 
to point the way. The loyal Christian Scientist is incapable 
alike of abusing the practice of Mind-healing or of healing 
on a material basis. 

The tempter is vigilant, awaiting only an opportunity 
to divide the ranks of Christian Science and scatter the 
sheep abroad; but "if God be for us, who can be against 
us?" The Cause, our Cause, is highly prosperous, rapidly 
spreading over the globe; and the morrow will crown the 
effort of to-day with a diadem of gems from the New 
Jerusalem. 



EXEMPLIFICATION 

fTlO energize wholesome spiritual warfare, to rebuke 
-■- vainglory, to offset boastful emptiness, to crown 
patient toil, and rejoice in the spirit and power of Christian 
Science, we must ourselves be true. There is but one way 
of doing good, and that is to do it ! There is but one way of 
being good, and that is to be good! 

Art thou still unacquainted with thyself? Then be in- 
troduced to this self. " Know thyself ! " as said the classic 
Grecian motto. Note well the falsity of this mortal self! 
Behold its vileness, and remember this poverty-stricken 
"stranger that is within thy gates." Cleanse every stain 
from this wanderer's soiled garments, wipe the dust from 
his feet and the tears from his eyes, that you may behold 
the real man, the fellow-saint of a holy household. There 
should be no blot on the escutcheon of our Christliness 
when we offer our gift upon the altar. 

A student desiring growth in the knowledge of Truth, 
can and will obtain it by taking up his cross and following 
Truth. If he does this not, and another one undertakes to 
carry his burden and do his work, the duty will not be 
accomplished. No one can save himself without God's 
help, and God will help each man who performs his own 
part. After this manner and in no other way is every 
man cared for and blessed. To the unwise helper our 

86 



EXEMPLIFICATION 87 

Master said, "Follow me; and let the dead bury their 
dead." 

The poet's line, "Order is heaven's first law/' is so eter- 
nally true, so axiomatic, that it has become a truism; and 
its wisdom is as obvious in religion and scholarship as in 
astronomy or mathematics. 

Experience has taught me that the rules of Christian 
Science can be far more thoroughly and readily acquired 
by regularly settled and systematic workers, than by un- 
settled and spasmodic efforts. Genuine Christian Scien- 
tists are, or should be, the most systematic and law-abiding 
people on earth, because their religion demands implicit 
adherence to fixed rules, in the orderly demonstration 
thereof. Let some of these rules be here stated. 

First: Christian Scientists are to "heal the sick" as the 
Master commanded. 

In so doing they must follow the divine order as pre- 
scribed by Jesus, — never, in any way, to trespass upon 
the rights of their neighbors, but to obey the celestial in- 
junction, "Whatsoever ye would that men should do to 
you, do ye even so to them." 

In this orderly, scientific dispensation healers become a 
law unto themselves. They feel their own burdens less, 
and can therefore bear the weight of others' burdens, since 
it is only through the lens of their unselfishness that the 
sunshine of Truth beams with such efficacy as to dissolve 
error. 

It is already understood that Christian Scientists will 
not receive a patient who is under the care of a regular 
physician, until he has done with the case and different aid 



88 RETROSPECTION AND INTROSPECTION 

is sought. The same courtesy should be observed in the 
professional intercourse of Christian Science healers with 
one another. 

Second: Another command of the Christ, his prime 
command, was that his followers should "raise the dead." 
He lifted his own body from the sepulchre. In him, Truth 
called the physical man from the tomb to health, and the 
so-called dead forthwith emerged into a higher manifesta- 
tion of Life. 

The spiritual significance of this command, "Raise the 
dead," most concerns mankind. It implies such an eleva- 
tion of the understanding as will enable thought to appre- 
hend the living beauty of Love, its practicality, its divine 
energies, its health-giving and life-bestowing qualities, — 
yea, its power to demonstrate immortality. This end Jesus 
achieved, both by example and precept. 

Third : This leads inevitably to a consideration of an- 
other part of Christian Science work, — a part which con- 
cerns us intimately, — preaching the gospel. 

This evangelistic duty should not be so warped as to 
signify that we must or may go, uninvited, to work in other 
vineyards than our own. One would, or should, blush to 
enter unasked another's pulpit, and preach without the 
consent of the stated occupant of that pulpit. The Lord's 
command means this, that we should adopt the spirit of 
the Saviour's ministry, and abide in such a spiritual atti- 
tude as will draw men unto us. Itinerancy should not be 
allowed to clip the wings of divine Science. Mind demon- 
strates omnipresence and omnipotence, but Mind revolves 
on a spiritual axis, and its power is displayed and its pres- 



EXEMPLIFICATION 89 

ence felt in eternal stillness and immovable Love. The 
divine potency of this spiritual mode of Mind, and the hin- 
drance opposed to it by material motion, is proven beyond 
a doubt in the practice of Mind-healing. 

In those days preaching and teaching were substantially 
one. There was no church preaching, in the modern sense 
of the term. Men assembled in the one temple (at Jeru- 
salem) for sacrificial ceremonies, not for sermons. Into 
the synagogues, scattered about in cities and villages, they 
went for liturgical worship, and instruction in the Mosaic 
law. If one worshipper preached to the others, he did so 
informally, and because he was bidden to this privileged 
duty at that particular moment. It was the custom to pay 
this hortatory compliment to a stranger, or to a member 
who had been away from the neighborhood; as Jesus was 
once asked to exhort, when he had been some time absent 
from Nazareth but once again entered the synagogue which 
he had frequented in childhood. 

Jesus' method was to instruct his own students; and he 
watched and guarded them unto the end, even according 
to his promise, "Lo, I am with you alway!" Nowhere in 
the four Gospels will Christian Scientists find any prece- 
dent for employing another student to take charge of 
their students, or for neglecting their own students, in 
order to enlarge their sphere of action. 

Above all, trespass not intentionally upon other people's 
thoughts, by endeavoring to influence other minds to any 
action not first made known to them or sought by them. 
Corporeal and selfish influence is human, fallible, and tem- 
porary; but incorporeal impulsion is divine, infallible, and 



90 RETROSPECTION AND INTROSPECTION 

eternal. The student should be most careful not to thrust 
aside Science, and shade God's window which lets in light, 
or seek to stand in God's stead. 

Does the faithful shepherd forsake the lambs, — retain- 
ing his salary for tending the home flock while he is serving 
another fold? There is no evidence to show that Jesus 
ever entered the towns whither he sent his disciples; no 
evidence that he there taught a few hungry ones, and then 
left them to starve or to stray. To these selected ones (like 
"the elect lady" to whom St. John addressed one of his 
epistles) he gave personal instruction, and gave in plain 
words, until they were able to fulfil his behest and depart 
on their united pilgrimages. This he did, even though 
one of the twelve whom he kept near himself betrayed 
him, and others forsook him. 

The true mother never willingly neglects her children 
in their early and sacred hours, consigning them to the care 
of nurse or stranger. Who can feel and comprehend the 
needs of her babe like the ardent mother? What other 
heart yearns with her solicitude, endures with her patience, 
waits with her hope, and labors with her love, to promote 
the welfare and happiness of her children? Thus must the 
Mother in Israel give all her hours to those first sacred 
tasks, till her children can walk steadfastly in wisdom's 
ways. 

One of my students wrote to me: "I believe the proper 
thing for us to do is to follow, as nearly as we can, in the 
path you have pursued ! " It is gladdening to find, in such 
a student, one of the children of light. It is safe to leave 
with God the government of man. He appoints and He 



EXEMPLIFICATION 91 

anoints His Truth-bearers, and God is their sure defense 
and refuge. 

The parable of "the prodigal son" is rightly called "the 
pearl of parables/' and our Master's greatest utterance may- 
well be called "the diamond sermon." No purer and more 
exalted teachings ever fell upon human ears than those con- 
tained in what is commonly known as the Sermon on the 
Mount, — though this name has been given it by compilers 
and translators of the Bible, and not by the Master him- 
self or by the Scripture authors. Indeed, this title really 
indicates more the Master's mood, than the material 
locality. 

Where did Jesus deliver this great lesson — or, rather, 
this series of great lessons — on humanity and divinity? 
On a hillside, near the sloping shores of the Lake of Gali- 
lee, where he spake primarily to his immediate disciples. 

In this simplicity, and with such fidelity, we see Jesus 
ministering to the spiritual needs of all who placed them- 
selves under his care, always leading them into the divine 
order, under the sway of his own perfect understanding. 
His power over others was spiritual, not corporeal. To the 
students whom he had chosen, his immortal teaching was 
the bread of Life. When he was with them, a fishing-boat 
became a sanctuary, and the solitude was peopled with 
holy messages from the All-Father. The grove became 
his class-room, and nature's haunts were the Messiah's 
university. 

What has this hillside priest, this seaside teacher, done 
for the human race? Ask, rather, what has he not done. 
His holy humility, unworldliness, and self-abandonment 



92 RETROSPECTION AND INTROSPECTION 

wrought infinite results. The method of his religion was 
not too simple to be sublime, nor was his power so exalted 
as to be unavailable for the needs of suffering mortals, 
whose wounds he healed by Truth and Love. 

His order of ministration was "first the blade, then the 
ear, after that the full corn in the ear." May we unloose 
the latchets of his Christliness, inherit his legacy of love, 
and reach the fruition of his promise: "If ye abide in me, 
and my words abide in you, ye shall ask what ye will, and 
it shall be done unto you." 



WAYMARKS 

IN the first century of the Christian era Jesus went about 
doing good. The evangelists of those days wandered 
about. Christ, or the spiritual idea, appeared to human 
consciousness as the man Jesus. At the present epoch 
the human concept of Christ is based on the incorporeal 
divine Principle of man, and Science has elevated this idea 
and established its rules in consonance with their Principle. 
Hear this saying of our Master, "And I, if I be lifted up 
from the earth, will draw all men unto me." 

The ideal of God is no longer impersonated as a waif or 
wanderer; and Truth is not fragmentary, disconnected, un- 
systematic, but concentrated and immovably fixed in Princi- 
ple. The best spiritual type of Christly method for uplifting 
human thought and imparting divine Truth, is stationary 
power, stillness, and strength; and when this spiritual ideal 
is made our own, it becomes the model for human action. 

St. Paul said to the Athenians, "For in Him we live, 
and move, and have our being." This statement is in sub- 
stance identical with my own: " There is no life, truth, 
substance, nor intelligence in matter." It is quite clear 
that as yet this grandest verity has not been fully demon- 
strated, but it is nevertheless true. If Christian Science 
reiterates St. Paul's teaching, we, as Christian Scientists, 
should give to the world convincing proof of the validity of 

93 



94 RETROSPECTION AND INTROSPECTION 

this scientific statement of being. Having perceived, in 
advance of others, this scientific fact, we owe to ourselves 
and to the world a struggle for its demonstration. 

At some period and in some way the conclusion must be 
met that whatsoever seems true, and yet contradicts divine 
Science and St. Paul's text, must be and is false; and that 
whatsoever seems to be good, and yet errs, though ac- 
knowledging the true way, is really evil. 

As dross is separated from gold, so Christ's baptism of 
fire, his purification through suffering, consumes whatso- 
ever is of sin. Therefore this purgation of divine mercy, 
destroying all error, leaves no flesh, no matter, to the mental 
consciousness. 

When all fleshly belief is annihilated, and every spot and 
blemish on the disk of consciousness is removed, then, and 
not till then, will immortal Truth be found true, and scien- 
tific teaching, preaching, and practice be essentially one. 
" Happy is he that condemneth not himself in that thing 
which he alloweth. ... for whatsoever is not of faith is 
sin." (Romans xiv. 22, 23.) 

There is no "lo here! or lo there!" in divine Science; 
its manifestation must be "the same yesterday, and 
to-day, and forever," since Science is eternally one, and 
unchanging, in Principle, rule, and demonstration. 

I am persuaded that only by the modesty and distin- 
guishing affection illustrated in Jesus' career, can Chris- 
tian Scientists aid the establishment of Christ's kingdom 
on the earth. In the first century of the Christian era Jesus' 
teachings bore much fruit, and the Father was glorified 
therein. In this period and the forthcoming centuries, 



WAYMARKS 95 

watered by dews of divine Science, this "tree of life" will 
blossom into greater freedom, and its leaves will be "for 
the healing of the nations." 

Ask God to give thee skill 

In comfort's art : 
That thou may'st consecrated be 

And set apart 
Unto a life of sympathy. 
For heavy is the weight of ill 

In every heart; 
And comforters are needed much 

Of Christlike touch. 

— A. E. Hamilton. 



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